


Tit for Tat

by mintaminta



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Anxiety, BDSM, Consensual Kink, Crossdressing, Depression, Dirty Talk, Dom Draco Malfoy, Dom/sub, Draco Malfoy Smokes, Draco Malfoy in Glasses, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Eating Disorders, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Famous Harry Potter, First Love, Fluff, From Sex to Love, Genderbending, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, POV Harry Potter, Past Abuse, Romance, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Smut, Sub Harry Potter, Switching, everyone needs so much therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 343,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26244286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintaminta/pseuds/mintaminta
Summary: EWE | Our story picks up five years post-war. Harry's ready to come out and leave the public life behind; Draco's looking for quiet reintegration into magical society in London.True angst! Emotional vulnerability! Romance of the star-crossed lover variety!If you're looking for a plot-driven epic with all the smut and all the feels, here it is, folks.*Updating bi-weekly*
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 396
Kudos: 700





	1. Mortifying Self Pity

* * *

**Wednesday, July 30, 2003**

"So, it's settled then."

Against his best efforts, weariness tinged Harry Potter's voice. The glossy black leather of the chair he sat in creaked under him as he leaned forwards, dipping his head as he tried to catch his press manager's eye. 

Her fingernails clicked like a crup's claws on hardwood over the tiny keyboard on her phone, her gaze sucked into its screen. Her manicure's pink was an excellent match to the yellow gold rings sparkling from her dainty fingers. This was the second time Harry'd repeated himself; he wouldn't be surprised if it took a third attempt to catch her attention.  
  
However, before he could ask a third time, she paused, placed the phone face down on the table between them, and shrugged.  
  
"You know how I work, Harry," she said, voice dangerously light. Victoria Cresswell's personality was as sharp as her winged eyeliner, and Harry was in her bad books, had been all year. "Everything is settled on my end."  
  
Harry stifled a laugh, turned it into a cough, but couldn't quite quell the sigh that followed it. Fuck, but he was tired of people dancing around what they meant to say around him. He removed his glasses to rub at his eyes and took a deep breath. Sure he was worn out, but he could do this.   
  
"Implying what, exactly, Victoria?" Harry replaced his glasses and folded his hands in his lap, hesitant to sound too defensive. "I'm good for it, I've already said so. I've got my outfit picked out and—"  
  
"Correction," she said, holding a manicured finger aloft. "I arranged for Reza to pick out an outfit for you. You're going to pick it up and wear it, and you're going to show up tomorrow night, and I swear on all that's good in this world you're going to smile when you meet with the press on your way out."

"Of course—" Harry said.

"Ah! Ah!" Victoria tutted him. "I'm not finished. You'll answer their questions just the way I've taught you to, using the answers I have so thoughtfully provided you with because you've got your thing for orphans, and if you're not careful, you'll upset someone we'd rather have on-side."  
  
"Victoria, you have got to stop saying a have a thing for orphans like that." He tried to sound stern. He really did. As usual, though, he was too tired, and amusement tugged the corner of his mouth into a crooked smile at Victoria's terrifying sense of humour. She flashed her teeth at him, her smile like a shark’s, all white teeth set within a slash of coral pink lippie.   
  
"People are going to talk," he said, leaning back into his chair and rolling his neck, thankful when it gave a satisfying crack, "and not in a good way."  
  
Victoria didn't much care for propriety, at least not in private. She waved him off with a brisk flick of her fingers. 

"Let them. I've got Witch Weekly and the Prophet in a bidding war to know exactly where you'll be celebrating this year. The winner will be funding a new wing in your latest pity project—"  
  
"Victoria—" Harry cut in, serious this time.   
  
"Alright, for your home for lonely waifs, if, if," the finger was back again, holding back the comment Harry so desperately wanted to insert, "and may I emphasize only if they get some meat on the bones of the story and get it out in print the next morning. They're keeping staff overnight, mind you." She gave Harry a meaningful look, one that said _I own you_ in no uncertain terms. "You may be you and all, but that doesn't make you the only thing worth the front cover."   
  
Victoria gave him a withering look, one perfected after many years of working with trouble clients. Harry knew exactly what kind of client he was.  
  
"I worked bloody hard for this, Harry. Show up and be good. Or, rather, don't," she added slyly.   
  
Harry sighed again. A pressure headache was building behind his left eye, and he'd need something substantial for it when he got home. Was there ibuprofen back at Grimmauld? A pain potion? He'd be fucked if he had to Apparate into Diagon for a fresh bottle of Ogden's anytime soon, though, frankly, he couldn't imagine heading out for anything during the coming week sober.  
  
"I'll go," he said, "I'll be good and wear the outfit and the mask and everything. I promise to take questions and even smile for the camera the way you like so much. Happy?"  
  
Victoria's attention was gone again, this time aimed at a laptop on the coffee table between herself and Harry.   
  
"Happy as a clam and perpetually at your service, our Saviour," she said, tapping the keys before her, her tongue slipping between her lips a little as she concentrated on something that captured her attention.   
  
Harry sighed a third time. It was going to be a long, long day.  
  
"Don't call me that Victoria, please. You know I don't like it."  
  
"Sorry," she said. She didn't sound it. "Harry. Just don't disappoint me, alright?"   
  
A pang of guilt swelled in him due to the implication that he would let her down. He knew all too well that it was a well-founded one. The last year had been a rough one for him, and it was only a healthy relationship between Victoria, Gawain Robards at the Ministry and Barnabas Cuffe at the Daily Prophet that had kept some of Harry's more egregious behaviour from becoming well known to the magical public.   
  
"I've got a reputation to uphold, and you do have a tendency of going missing," she said. Harry looked to his scuffed up trainers, head hung with a modicum of shame. Victoria was one of a handful of people who knew where Harry went when he went missing, knew it was to his bathroom floor, blind drunk and locked into Grimmauld. She'd caught him like that only once; it had made him careful to lock the Floo against visitors when a dark spell came over him ever since. 

"I only call you that when you get to acting so bloody old all the time. I've got almost a decade on you, and here I am, nagging you to get out there and have some fun. Try to be like a normal bloke your age for a night. Who knows," she said, in an undertone, "you might even like it."  
  
Harry had the urge to grumble about only being the way he was precisely because he wasn't like blokes his age, but he swallowed the words. Nobody enjoyed hearing him gripe about the maniac who hunted him throughout his adolescence, anyway. 

He instead managed a hum of agreement. Victoria gave him a tight smile.   
  
"Best you get it in now before you're thirty because let me tell you, your body won't bounce back the same after you're over that hill. Snog someone for me, won't you? Oh, or better yet, bring a bloke home with you. Not that you need the extra exposure, but what with the book launch plans and all, a little frenzy never hurts for sales."  
  
Harry took this as his signal to go. He began shrugging his jacket on, nodding in vague acquiescence. He needed to eat before his nerves took the option from him, and needed a drink to keep them at bay.   
  
"I won't make any promises, but I'll try. To have fun," Harry said.  
  
"That's why you pay me the big bucks," Victoria said distractedly, squinting at the laptop screen before her.   
  
"Sure. Er, do you mind me asking? How'd you get those to work in here? The Muggle things," Harry asked, gesturing at the devices surrounding her.  
  
Victoria perked up, a single thin brow rising, though her forehead remained placid as a calm pool. "New thing they're selling down Diagon. It's a potion to keep magic from frying them. Only works for a couple of months, though," she added with a shrug. "That's where they get you—you've got to buy a subscription to keep it up." 

Her thin lips cracked a smile. "You wouldn't believe what people get up to in the chatty rooms. You're looking to get on the web, are you?"  
  
Harry barely opened his mouth to ask her what could possibly be so salacious in an online room explicitly made for chatting before she cut him off.  
  
"Don't answer that last; I don't care—I'll have Tom arrange to have the electronics, and some of the potions sent round yours. Would you be interested in a sponsorship deal?"  
  
Harry washed his hands together, nervous at how everything was always an opportunity, an in, a potential payday. He just wanted to go home. 

"I don't know. Ask what they're willing to pay, and you tell me. Thanks, I think," Harry said, already halfway out the door. Leaving Victoria's office with a smile on his face and a headache looming was par for the course.  
  
"Oh, and Harry—"  
  
Harry stopped the door with a hand, poked his head back inside.  
  
Victoria granted him one of her rare, real smiles. The Tiffany chains at her wrists clinked against one another as she clasped her hands together under her chin, an array of silver against spray-tan orange.  
  
"—have a happy birthday."  
  
Harry winked at her and slipped out the door.

* * *

**Thursday, July 31, 2003 - Harry's Birthday**

The sun had been blazing in the sky for hours by the time Harry dragged himself from his bedclothes, but he didn't know it. There were no clocks in his bedroom at Grimmauld Place for good reason. He'd won the battle with Kreacher long ago to keep the curtains drawn—a Permanent Sticking Charm had been threatened, and Kreacher finally acquiesced to leaving them closed, if only in Harry's private spaces.   
  
The path from the bedroom to the parlour to the bathroom and all the way down two floors to the lounge and kitchen was one with absolutely nothing of note along its length. The severed heads of the house-elves who had once served the Black family were long gone; the shadow-boxes of trinkets and framed portraits of Black family members past were wrapped up in muslin in his Gringotts vault, likely never to be seen again. Harry shuttered most of the windows and stripped the walls bare not long after moving in, and was sure that he liked it best this way. Or, rather, hated it least. The occasional candle spluttered to life as he passed from room to room, and despite his and Kreacher's many attempts of cleanings and airings over the years, the house somehow remained exactly as musty and appeared just as dark as it did before they tried, regardless of the season.   
  
He ran through the daily Auror training exercises as soon as he woke. This was a non-negotiable, a near-painful constant. It was something Ron mocked him for as something he could, _you know—do at work_. Harry didn't have a good way to explain that he needed the burn in his muscles to feel prepared enough for what could be thrown at him daily. There were things for which he didn't have words these days, not even for Ron. 

The parts of the parlour that didn't collect dust as readily as the rest told the story of this morning ritual. Spots on the velvet couch shone a darker blue from where he gripped into tricep dips. A strip of carpet worn exceptionally thin from a short sprint, down to ten push-ups, up, sprint, down, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth again. The solitary huffs of his breath fell strangely on his ears, the only sound in the house at this hour. It was so unlike when he had been joined by a chorus of other recruits, their heaving echoing back at them from Ministry's gymnasium's high ceilings. But it was enough. It had to be enough, as it did for him what talking might for others, what drinking did but couldn't be counted on early in the day. Something about the burn in his back as he counted the seconds and minutes of a plank, the needling pain in his thighs from one too many squats made the days more manageable. Quietened the mantras running through his mind, replaced them with counting, with feelings, hot and sharp and yes, absolutely painful. As if being prepared to run to or from something at a moment's notice was a good thing. Because it was for him. Always had been.  
  
Next was the shower. Unlike the showers he had grown accustomed to at the Dursley's and later, Hogwarts, Grimmauld's water was always scalding hot, and he could stay in as long as he wanted to. The bathroom was one of the few decent spaces in the house, with its lush sword-fern gifted by Neville a few years back, and the single heavy mirror hung above the sink that occasionally joined in and harmonized with Harry when the tune was old enough that it recognized it. They had a hell of a time singing Auld Lang Syne together, though mostly when Harry was too blotto to recall all the lyrics. 

He had all the time in the world lately, so he took it. Washed his hair twice. Brushed his teeth the Muggle way under the stream of the hot jets. Sometimes he'd even catch himself humming as he scrubbed with one of the many soaps and concoctions littering the tub's edge, trinkets sent by companies trying for an endorsement. Today was something spicy with sandalwood in, and it was good. The humming stopped as he gave in, his right hand dropping lower until he was wanking and came fast, too fast, the way he always did in the morning. Water sluiced over his chest, washing spunk from his fingertips, and he stood there under it until his breathing slowed again, evened out. It never lasted the way he wanted it to. The way it happened, there was barely enough time to fantasize about any one person at all.  
  
He stayed in for minutes afterwards, letting the water pummel his back. It was this moment each day was when his brain's hum was at its quietest.   
  
At last, he dried and dressed in modest Muggle clothing, finishing his route with a visit to the kitchen. 

A massive robins-egg blue oblong box awaited him on the kitchen table, a sight he looked forward to every year. It sat among a mountain of other mail that he cast a sour look at; some ripped open from the days previous and unanswered, some brand new, and more likely to show up every hour. The box was his special treat, so he pulled it from the pile and sat crosslegged on the floor, grinning as he hunched over it, summoning a fork with a thought. 

"Oh, piss off," he said as fat water droplets rained down onto the unopened box-lid. He wiggled his fingers at the door, waiting until a towel floated into his grasp. He used the cloth to twist his hair up into the way Hermione showed him to keep it from dripping onto the fudge cake Molly and Arthur had sent over.   
  
"Happy birthday," he said aloud before he tucked in.  
  
Half a fudge cake later, Harry held his loudly complaining stomach with one hand while he perused his home-bar stock with dismay. The whisky was gone, since when he didn't remember. The only bottles left with anything substantial in them were the detritus of ill-informed gifts over the years, like a full bottle of something mint-coloured and spit consistency. Kreacher was loudly banging about upstairs, no doubt miffed that Harry hadn't called him up for a late breakfast, which was a blessing because he was at his loudest when Harry started looking at the home bar before noon.  
  
Harry toed into his favourite pair of trainers and vanished the towel to the laundry, pulling his sweatshirt's hood over his mop of still-damp hair. It was nearly time for a haircut, his fringe flopping over his specs' rim, but that could wait another day or two. A visit to Diagon Alley on his birthday had become something of a ritual. There was never enough whisky in the house to get through it otherwise.  
  
"Just popping out for a minute," he said to the empty dining room, walking its length to peek into the kitchen for Kreacher. "Oh, running errands in Diagon. Won't be a minute. Want me to grab you anything?"  
  
A cupboard rattled softly, and then there was silence. Harry sighed. The house seemed to be getting as tired of his little jokes as he was.  
  
He Apparated to the north end of Diagon Alley, immediately crossing the street. Harried parents with buckets of children in tow littered the road—the Hogwarts letters had just gone out, and the alley would be a frenzy for the next few weeks. Harry made a mental note to check in with George once the worst of the rush was over, perhaps pop over for dinner to check how he and Angelina were faring at the shop. There had been talk of expanding the Christmas previous, and Harry was eager to help however he could. He kept his face down, hands in his pockets as he slipped into an unassuming little shop with a bright blue sign reading Fatima's Famous Robes dangling above the door. He prayed for quiet inside—Fatima's was a newer addition to the stretch of road where cracked and faded clapboard had become the norm, and was the unknown provider of most of Harry's evening-wear.   
  
The familiar riot of overlarge bells jingled as he stepped through the door. Lucky for Harry, Fatima didn't carry children's sizes, and he breathed a sigh of relief. The owner looked up from the conversation she was having with the lone other customer in the shop at the counter. Harry pulled back his hood so that he could offer her a small smile before bowing his head to hide his face again.   
  
"Rush order for pickup," she called over her shoulder, returning to her conversation.  
  
Harry pretended to peruse the robes turning slowly in the windows, walking the shop's perimeter at a snail's pace. He hadn't chosen anything to wear for himself in years, but he didn't mind looking. It was too hot to be dressed as he was, and his scalp itched from the combined heat and damp. It wasn't long before the bells above the door jingled once more as the customer left.  
  
"How's your birthday treating you, Harry," the shop owner asked him. She flicked her wand to the door, and the lock clicked as a "Back in 10" sign clacked into place against the glass. 

Harry pulled his hood down and crossed the room in a few steps, offering a hand to her, which she took and squeezed. He didn't like being touched as a rule, but Fatima felt like a friend to him, a face that took none of his bullshit and kept all his secrets. He hesitated before answering, watched her smile flicker. She looked worried about him, he had to guess. He managed a small smile, enough to placate her at least.  
  
"Oh, you know," he said airily. "Can't complain."  
  
"Something tells me you wouldn't even if you had good reason to," she eyed him knowingly. "Reza's already been by with your order for the next few months. You wouldn't be trying to alter it for any reason, would you?"  
  
Harry attempted his most innocent look at the witch, doe eyes in full-force. He batted his eyelashes a few times for good measure.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Fatima, come now. But you know, now that you ask—please dear god, no velvet. Please, please, I beg you."  
  
She cracked a broad smile, revealing the gold teeth that Harry envied. Hermione had forbidden him from driving Sirius' motorcycle, full-stop, and this had become his second-best option at having something, anything, cool in his life. He had wished all through Auror training that he'd have a tooth knocked loose if only to have an excellent excuse to request a gold replacement, but people regularly pulled their punches around him, so he'd had no such luck. 

"I'll take that into consideration," Fatima said. "You know that when he comes through, he brings bribes."  
  
A shop worker with a thick black bob and an outrageous amount of show jewelry appeared from the door behind her, a small paper bag in hand. She was distracted by trying to stuff something more deeply into it, her arm disappearing into its depths as she approached them.   
  
"Rush order, coming right up. The latest in Muggle fashion, with an in-built extension charm on the pockets for the length of your wand, mister—"  
  
She looked up and promptly dropped the bag as she took in Harry's face.  
  
"Potter?"  
  
"Parkinson?"   
  
For a moment, they both stood gaping at one another. Harry couldn't help but stare; Pansy's face was artfully smudged with thick lines of winged eyeliner and shimmering green eyeshadow up to the eyebrows, an attempt to give a feline edge to a look that remained pug-like thanks to her distinctly upturned button nose. She found her composure before Harry could, clapping her jaw shut and dropping out of view, reappearing with the bag only to shove it roughly into his hands. Harry swallowed hard, fumbling to hold on to it properly.  
  
"I. Never. Um, I never, uh," she blustered, her face rapidly turning splotchy red and white. Her body made a strange rolling wave motion as though she might sick up over herself.  
  
"How long has she," Harry asked Fatima, pointing at Pansy before realizing how rude it was to do so. He slapped the offending hand at his chest. 

"I mean. I've been coming here for years." He swallowed hard. "When. Did. Work. Here?"  
  
Fatima looked between the two of them. "I got her from Parson's. Top of her class; she's going to be taking on your custom pieces," she said, a smirk on her lips.  
  
"Oh. That's nice," Harry said faintly.  
  
"I take it you two know one another?"  
  
"School," Harry answered.  
  
He glanced into the bag, still stunned as Pansy blurted out, "I'm sorry I did what I did I wouldn't do it if I had the chance again, and it just never came up, you know, I haven't exactly seen you out and about, but I, um, hope you don't hate me." She paused, and then said all in a rush, "The trousers will look great on you, I did the alterations myself, and the cut is perfect for blokes with your body type. You'll have a nice," she made the outline of a triangle in the air with her fingertips, its flat edge at the top, "you know. Broad shoulders." She made the shape of a long, vertical rectangle in the air and squeaked, "Nipped waist. You'll look taller."  
  
"Oh. Cause I'm so short?" He looked from Pansy's drawn face to Fatima's, perched perilously on the edge of explosive laughter. "Er. Thanks." Harry looked into the bag again, wishing more than anything that the Extensible Charm on it was strong enough that he could hop inside and disappear among the folds of fabric. Pansy, apparently overcome with the awkwardness of it all, bolted for the backroom.  
  
"Should I ask?" Fatima's question broke the awkward silence that followed Pansy's departure. It snapped Harry back to reality. He shook himself and pulled his hood back up.  
  
"Old news. Just a shock. I'll uh, be seeing you again soon, I gather."  
  
"With bribes," she responded.  
  
"Chocolates?" Harry guessed at, already stepping towards the door. 

He didn't have the time for this. No pleasantries, not on his birthday. The hawks that circled him wherever he went were probably already there, just outside, and he couldn't risk them catching him buying Ogden's.  
  
"Brandy, boy, brandy. And don't be cheap about it, or you'll be in tartan velvet into the next decade."  
  
"Noted," Harry said with a tight smile and a tip of his head to Fatima as he exited the shop. 

He was on a short-timer on trips out to magical places. Even when he wasn't spotted by a fan who found it necessary to scream his name, the press seemed to have an easier time finding him each new month. It was probably the doing of a mole in the Department of Transport tipping the news agencies off, but who had the time to look into that? 

As soon as he turned to hurry up the street, a flash of light, a crack, and a small cloud of pink smoke went off in his face. He instinctively curled into himself, covering his face with his bag and starting at a run.  
  
"Bollocks," he cursed, closing his eyes and thinking of home with a spin of his heel, Apparition points be damned.  
  
His arrival at Grimmauld was announced loudly with a string of fierce cursing as his thigh knocked into the kitchen table's rough corner. 

"How do I always _fucking_ do that," he growled. "Guess it's just you and me and whatever that bottle of mint shite is then," he said to the blue box, throwing the bag of shopping to the side and sitting down on the floor with a huff, angrily stuffing a fresh forkful of cake into his mouth.  


* * *

Still alone at home that night, Harry snorted into an empty room as he looked at the pile of pain relievers, potions, and liquor he'd amassed. He realized only after collecting them all that the tableau was a tad macabre. Also on the table: something that looked like a cake-box but which arrived steaming through the cracks, from George and Angelina; letters cascading out from the ripped seam of a yellow envelope from his magical mailer service, including one from Ron and Hermione inviting themselves over for his birthday dinner this weekend; an assortment of cards from school-friends, Ministry dignitaries, and businesses that he frequented; postcards from Luna (France), Neville and Ginny (Canada); and a stack a full foot high of well-wishes and solicitations of his time from charities that Victoria had gone behind his back to have sent to him, even after Harry's repeated attempts to have them labelled as junk. It was almost as though he'd rather blackout, alone, than to celebrate his good fortune of being alive another year.   
  
Not that he'd given the idea some thought.   
  
Unfortunately, there was nothing for it. He'd given Victoria his word, and his word was his bond. He shook a few pain pills free of a bottle and knocked them back dry before pouring a liberal three fingers of Firewhisky (passed through the Floo by a very understanding Ron) into a cut-crystal tumbler and left the rest of the pile of sadness to disassemble later. Harry had gotten used to glomming onto Neville's birthday celebration in years previous, but as he was out of the country this time around, he was perfectly happy to save most of the celebrating for the weekend. 

After all, he thought, as he walked from the room, there was no one but Kreacher to notice the pile anyway. Harry's ancient house-elf's partiality meant that his lips were sealed, so Harry figured there was little harm in doing this.   
  
Or so he pretended as he started down the stairs and then immediately retraced his steps because he couldn't go getting soft now. He reluctantly put down the whisky, summoned the bottles and trudged about, putting them away. 

It would only take a minute. Not a big deal, not a big deal. 

He had to repeat this to himself whenever this happened, as his chest started to tighten. What he couldn't begin to think about was why, if it was no big deal, he could never put it off until later. Why he couldn't, just this once, let it go?

But the thing was, Harry knew the answer to this question. It was because the one time he didn't listen to the little voice in his head would be the time when everything went wrong. The time someone dropped in announced, someone he didn't know well, and spilled the story to the press. Or took a photo, god forbid, or—  
  
That he still startled and drew his wand when a floorboard so much as creaked out of turn; that he sometimes went mute, unable to say goodbye to friends at the end of an otherwise lovely night for fear that somehow it would be the last time he saw them; these were the sorts of things his mind Healer had told him he'd work through in time. How much time, he stopped asking about years ago, before he stopped going altogether. He figured that therapy didn't work on him, that his status was "broken", and he may as well get on with finding a way to make a life that accepted that brokenness as innate. So he did.  
  
Every action warranted a stream of intrusive thoughts, most of the repetitive and anxiety-inducing variety. Ron started all his imitations of Harry with, "But what if...", now. The fact that his internal monologue had become so thoroughly externalized hadn't passed Harry's notice.   
  
A constant state of worry just seemed par for the course. Top of mind, day in, day out, especially concerning what might get out to the press. The when, the how, the why of it. Who would be affected and what the angle would be and how much of it, exactly, was his fault. Which was all of it, always. Even in his own home, he found it difficult to go a few hours without the thoughts pushing in like static on a radio with the volume steadily increasing.  
  
But at least tonight had a plan, a neat little map to follow that would "Shape the narrative" — one of Victoria's favourite phrases.  
  
Because tonight Harry Potter turned twenty-three, and whether the wizarding world was ready or not, he was coming out of the closet.  
  
Not that he wanted it to be a big affair. Harry was as surprised as anybody that it was still a secret. Considering how much slagging around in Muggle bars he'd managed to fit into the latter half of his days of Auror training, it was a miracle in and of itself that the story hadn't broken already. 

He barely remembered it all but knew that it was fun, that slip of time between coming to terms with his sexuality and rightly freaking out about how and when he was supposed to say, "I'm gay!" to the world at large.   
  
He slotted the last few bottles of painkillers into their place in the bathroom as his mind drifted back to the day of his graduation, the induction of the latest crop of trainee Aurors. 

It had been a grey day in late May. Palms sweating, the moment before he'd walked out on stage, he'd seriously considering using those two words as the entirety of his speech to the graduating class. He'd practiced mouthing them along with various expressions in the mirror at home.

"I'm gay." Solemn face, the sort that had been memorialized on the front-pages of papers from all the funerals he'd attended.

"I'm gay!" A bright smile with all his teeth where the mirth didn't travel to his eyes, the kind for photo-ops with politicians.  
  
But no. He'd made the moving, impassioned speech that people had come to expect of him. He'd left faces in the audience glistening with tears and was now often quoted at other graduation ceremonies across the globe. 

When there hadn't been a date on his arm at the after-party, the only thing anyone thought of it was that he was straight and available and should, therefore, be propositioned by witches at a dizzying rate. Someone had slipped a brassiere into the pocket of his cloak—it was stuffed, still, at the back of his armoire, along with bundles of ratty clothes he never seemed able to get rid of. Harry celebrated earnestly that night with friends, co-workers. He lost his voice, singing along with Ron at top volume, each of them raising increasingly ludicrous toasts to the other as the night progressed. He left on the pretence of turning in early, gone directly to a Muggle bar, and woke up the next morning on Grimmauld Place's roof, fully dressed, not a clue how he ended up there.

The papers kept spinning their wheels about the "notoriously private" young saviour, because Harry Potter was a known quantity, squeaky clean, did what he was told, on his way to head the Auror department one day if he kept at it like this. They wondered who he'd bring along to the top with him. A pretty young thing, like a Muggle-born movie star? A Quidditch captain? An up-and-coming political marvel? Harry believed it too. Had spent the last five years splitting his time between hiding in plain sight in Muggle parts of town and being the most famous person in London's magical society. Had gone on dates, dozens of polite, nice-to-meet-you-but-the-chemistry-just-isn't-there dates, with many lovely ladies. Had become incredibly adept at breaking himself into the parts no one got to see—weekends spent fixing up a house that he hated and yet felt obligated to, stuck trying to brighten up space even when he was too depressed to get out of bed half the time. The derelict sadness that wafted from its very walls gradually came to match his situation's profound loneliness, and he grew to accept it. He was as much Grimmauld Place as it was him. A mausoleum of sorts. A place few visited, fewer knew.

There was that, sure, and then there were the parts everyone and their dog knew—Harry Potter, hero, a young man at the peak of health smiling out from the front cover; Harry Potter, leading the charge, cutting the ribbon, laying the first brick. He had himself convinced that it was all excellent, and the details would come out in the wash. That the life he lived was as good as it got.  
  
And then, a month later, he quit. Well, "deferred admission into the Aurors by a year to pursue time for self-reflection" was the official line. It didn't feel right to keep secrets from his Auror partner, whoever he would end up assigned to. That wasn't even mentioning everything he did for the Ministry that went above the call of duty; the photo-ops and co-signs and op-ed's timed just before a critical vote. It was banal, precisely the kind of posturing that his fifteen-year-old self had balked at, but it had become par for the course. 

Beyond that, he needed the break. The gruelling hours required for physical and magical combat training, rigorous studies (made all the more puzzling considering he never had the chance to finish seventh year) and his charity and government work nearly ruined him. While still a teenager, he hired a tutor, a PR manager, legal counsel and a stylist, and even with Kreacher cooking meals and taking up the tidying, it wasn't enough.   
  
He began balding from the stress of it at twenty, the shower drains suddenly a mess, as though he were grooming crups at home—an empty spot the size of a knut still hid inside the wild nest of his hair. By the time of his graduation ceremony at a tender twenty-two, he'd developed a predilection for panic attacks and a severe drinking habit.   
  
Harry reminded himself of that time, a few months ago—the worst time—whenever he felt nervous about his plans. It was him, after all, who had thought up doing the biography—the story of his life, plain as day for anyone to read: no more secrets, no more lies. The dark would go in alongside the light, the ugliest things he'd ever done cheek-to-cheek with the most beautiful moments he'd had the joy of witnessing. In advance of the book coming out, he would too, and with everything out there, he'd be free. He wouldn't have to watch his tongue when speaking certain truths about Dumbledore or Snape. He could take a bloke on a date, a real date, not just a drunken one-night-stand with a Muggle that knew him as James. If it worked out well, he'd feel at peace enough to go back to the Auror's a regular man. Just Auror Potter, maybe, instead of the enigmatic, mysterious Harry Potter.   
  
That was the idea, at least. Lately, when Harry started to lose his nerve, he would think back to the height of his stress and concentrate on how this break, the book, all of it, how these things were the answer. 

But more often than not, like right now, he sipped his Firewhisky and relished blowing the smoke from his nostrils.   
  
Harry drifted upstairs to his bedroom. He wondered at the absurdity that his practically non-existent sex life was considered public property, but he knew better than to brood too long on the subject. He may not have chosen this life, sure, but it was his, and there was no escaping it.  
  
"Only shaping the narrative," he murmured as he appraised the outfit from Fatima's.  
  
It was simple—only slightly more daring than he'd have gone for had he picked out the pieces himself. A t-shirt in green so dark it appeared almost black. It featured a wider than an average crew neck, as requested. He pulled it on and tugged at the neckline anyway.  
  
"As loose as you can get, basically," he'd told Reza, his stylist.   
  
"Boatneck, you mean," the man had responded with something of a sneer.   
  
"Well, not that wide more like... er, like a regular one, but if you'd pulled at it for a long time?"   
  
Reza chose not to dignify this with a response, electing instead to roll his eyes so far back into his skull Harry thought his irises might never again reappear.   
  
Harry felt blessed by having a staff that didn't treat him like his shit didn't stink. On the flip-side, they, on the whole, seemed perpetually bothered by his ineptitude. Reza had once asked him if he knew how to tie his shoes. To this day, Harry wasn't sure if it was meant as a joke.  
  
The trousers to accompany the shirt were shiny enough that fear spiked in his stomach for a moment. Could they be leather? Was this Pansy Parkinson's idea of a sick joke? He picked them up and rubbed them between his fingers experimentally, realizing they were simply a shiny pair of denim. Oiled? Waxed? He'd been taught this before but had forgotten.  
  
He found them slightly tighter in the arse and thigh than he'd like, but that was nothing another drink couldn't assuage. A leather belt and a pair of black trainers later, he felt close to ready as he checked himself out in the mirror.  
  
Not so much had changed since the end of his school days. His hair was still a mess, handfuls of it continuing to shoot up and over in all directions. He kept the sides and back neater than he'd managed as a teenager, and lately, a waft of greys had eagerly sprung up over his left temple. Witch Weekly noted them and started keeping a tally—seventeen confirmed, up to twenty spotted—and for a time had dedicated a monthly column into what could be contributing to their presence. Harry had to laugh even while his stomach did flip flops when he and Hermione completed the quizzes together on a lark. The answers continued to centre around Voldemort, reconstruction woes, and restitution battles; never the fear of coming out to your adopted pureblood family, or how to broach bottoming for the first time when you're closeted and also wizarding Britain's "Most Eligible Bachelor."   
  
He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it. There was no use fussing, so he didn't bother trying.   
  
His glasses were still around. He'd recently overheard that Reza was planning for him "to go tortoiseshell for fall," and the thought that his glasses were about to become a seasonal affair worried Harry if only a little.  
  
He'd shaved today, and supposed that he should feel lucky for his strong jawline. A combination of Molly Weasley's hearty cooking and the Auror's strictly enforced exercise regimen had worked in tandem to add a few much-needed stone to his frame. The callouses on his palms were just starting to fade due to the difficulty he found in finding a time and a place to hop on a broom and get some flying in, but what little he had managed this summer had left his forearms bronzed, cheekbones and nose ever so slightly burnt.  
  
He looked—okay, he supposed. The scars he was comfortable sharing with the world were visible on his hand, forearm, and forehead, recognizable, and he thought, blemishes to the overall. To this day, he wasn't quite sure what the fawning public saw when they drooled over pictures of him, but apparently, there was something attractive to his look. He just had to believe in that part of himself more often.   
  
There was one more item awaiting him, and worrying his lip and drinking whisky and staring at himself in the mirror weren't miraculously making it go away.  
  
"Buck up," he whispered.  
  
A somewhat elaborate mask was the last item laid out on his bed—dark grey satin ribbons attached to each side. Placing it at his face, the ribbons wandered to the back of his head, tying themselves into a flat bow.   
  
He couldn't help but smile at the trick. All these years later, magic still managed to both surprise and delight him.  
  
Looking one last time in the mirror, he was thankful that he couldn't recognize himself. The mask's black metal cut down halfway across his cheeks and nose. Curlicues in bronze adorned the edges, while ornate snakes and some kind of flying beast rested across each side's top. Medusa's head adorned the centre, her green eyes twinkling. He remembered asking about it when Reza had described the mask to him.  
  
"What's with the medusa head?"  
  
Reza had rolled his eyes, "Because it's Versace, oh my God, just please if someone asks 'Who are you wearing?' it's Versace, Versace, Versace."  
  
"Sorry, what was it? I don't think I quite got it," Harry egged him on, laughing as he had stormed from the room.  
  
"Oh, what? This old thing?" Harry coquettishly addressed himself in the mirror, taking one last swig from the tumbler. His emerald green eyes twinkled back mischievously—the one attribute he allowed himself to feel pure vanity for. The whisky had done its job, leaving limbs loose in the joints and blood hot in his veins. His mind was quiet, even though his heart beat fast with anticipation.  
  
"It's Versace," he said to his reflection.  
  
He almost managed to walk away without breaking into peels of laughter.   
  
With that, he grabbed a leather jacket and his wand, took a pinch of Floo powder and threw it into the hearth, stepping into the green flames while announcing, "Gollybean, East London," and was off.  


* * *

  
Harry hadn't prepared for this.  
  
But being unprepared didn't have to mean that he wasn't having a good time, he sternly reminded himself. Just because the neon lights' glow wasn't nearly enough to see by didn't make the room unsafe, per se. It could be fun; he could have fun here; he knew what fun was. Dulling your senses was enjoyable, right? He could enjoy a drink around other people just as much as the next person. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the space, but it was all Harry could manage to not think about how much he was already stress-sweating.   
  
Just because there were at least a hundred people between himself and any of the three exits on this floor didn't mean he wouldn't escape in the event of, say, an attack by neo-Death Eaters. And why should he worry about being attacked in this club in the first place? No one knew he was here yet anyway, right? Right?  
  
And so on. His mind had begun to do what he'd trained since the age of eleven to do.   
  
He couldn't help but think of the old joke that alumni of the Order loved to bring up; that if he were ever to get a tattoo, it would be "CONSTANT VIGILANCE" in all capitals across his forehead. Because even half a decade out from the war, Harry could still hardly be in a pub without finding the most protected corner table nearest an exit as his preferred seat.  
  
Thinking about how nonchalant his friends were about what was obviously a mental health issue made Harry want to laugh and scream simultaneously. He had to think about something, anything else, but all Gollybean's dark, sweaty interior seething with masked bodies continued to do was set off alarm bells in his head.  
  
He had to cool down. Slow the thoughts. Stem them.  
  
"Fancy a drink?"  
  
A man was suddenly before him, a toothy grin poking out from beneath a silver mask. Harry forced a smile, one he'd practiced a thousand times.  
  
"Could you tell? I've never been to a masquerade before."  
  
"You look a bit nervous." The man's smile was wide and genuine, and while Harry didn't feel any safer, he recognized that feeling less alone was a step in the right direction. "I was going to ask if you've ever been to a gay bar before."  
  
"I might not be a seasoned club-kid, but I'm not that new," Harry said.   
  
The man held his eyes, smiling. "What you take?"  
  
"Er—whisky. Ice."  
  
"Firewhisky or..." He let the sentence dangle, trying to glean whether Harry would recognize the term.   
  
"Firewhisky," he responded conclusively. The man turned to wave over a bartender. Harry clinked his glass to cheers and tried his best not to down his in one.  
  
"I had a feeling you'd be a wizard. Not that I'd mind mixing with Muggles or anything I just—"  
  
"Don't have much experience?" Harry offered.  
  
"Something like that," the man said.  
  
Harry tipped back most of the drink on his second go. He was going to need another, and another after that, to make it through the night. He examined the mysterious drink-buyer—he had white teeth and dark, smooth skin, and kept flashing a smile that Harry could find charming. Harry had to hope that his first conversation of the night wasn't with a bigot.   
  
"They're just like us, y'know? A whole spectrum of personalities. Some are just as conservative as the oldest pureblood families. Some Muggles know more about the magical world than Squibs do. The ones the Ministry approved to know about these mixed clubs will, for sure. You'll be fine."  
  
"Oh, I'm sure I'll be fine. Weird to be nervous about meeting Muggles though, innit? When they're probably so much more scared of us? Greg, by the way."  
  
"James," Harry offered the fake name without a second thought, going for a quick handshake.   
  
"Thanks for the drink, Greg. I've got a friend I'm supposed to meet by the Floos. I'll, er, see you on the dance floor."  
  
Greg, with Very White Teeth, nodded, taking the lie at face value.   
  
"Cheers. See you out there, James."  
  
Harry stole away, up a flight of stairs (not too dark, no, it was fine, he wasn't likely to trip and die here at all) and into a second bar (better lit, room to breathe, but only marginally).  
  
"Champagne is a girl's best friend" glowed out from a pink neon sign behind the bar, its colour reflected in the mirrored walls and floors. It was bewitched to emit tiny, sparkling bubbles that floated lazily across the room. These occasionally popped atop the heads and shoulders of patrons, releasing a faint dusting of glitter. It was airier on this floor, and Harry took a moment to breathe deeply.   
  
"Not so bad if they've got a champagne bar," he mumbled to himself, wondering when precisely a three drink minimum had become his status quo when a server passed him, her mask a confection of pink baubles shifting around her face. It was rather arty, though something about the whole thing reminded Harry more of pimples than bubblegum. He wisely decided to keep that thought to himself.  
  
"Champagne? Compliments of the house," she pushed a cool flute into his sweaty palm, "join us in the Wet Room at midnight for the performance."  
  
Harry barely nodded his thanks to her before she glided on, passing out more flutes. New glasses popped into place to replace each one she picked up and gave away.   
  
"Bottoms up," he said to himself, downing one, finding the server again on the room's west wall, snagging another. Dodging strangers' attempts at starting conversations led him to hide out in the loos, misplacing his drink only to find what he hoped to be the same glass on his way out. He wandered for a while, hovering at the edges of conversations and dance circles but never joining them, his brain buzzing from the booze. He finally tucked himself into the corner of what he surmised to be the Wet Room, with its lacquered walls and shower stalls on raised plinths dotting the dance floor. He'd be legless if he kept drinking at this pace but couldn't care.   
  
Suddenly, a yelp of surprise went up from the crowd as the lights in the room dimmed. Harry's heart beat a sharp staccato. He balled up his fists until the feeling of his fingernails biting into his palms brought him back to the moment. 

It was the sound of surprise, not screaming. 

"You're okay," he whispered to himself, "everyone is okay. This is fine. You're okay, you're okay." 

He hated everything about being there at that moment and had no one to tell. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and released his fists as spotlights flooded a stage on the farthest wall.   
  
It illuminated a trio of performers striking poses, not unlike those that Charlie's Angels hit before commencing their international, spy-related arse-kicking. Harry smiled at this thought, finishing the last of his drink and pulling a face at the weird bitter flavour it had taken on.  
  
"Last one, Victoria, I promise," he muttered as he set the glass on the ledge behind him and tried to concentrate on the show.  
  
Each performer looked as though they had been dipped in a different vat of glitter. One was thickly muscled and wearing bondage gear, complete with a strappy vest, leather trousers, boots laced to his knees, and the pre-requisite mask, all dripping bronze. The centre performer was all gold, a corset strapped unearthly tight around a tiny waist. The silver-dipped performer to the right must be a Veela, a latex dress hugging her hourglass figure, a sheet of white hair falling to her knees.   
  
A synth's sound came on over the speaker system, a chorus of children's voices joining in soon after.  
  
_"Do the D.A.N.C.E.,_  
 _One, two, three, four five..."_  
  
Soon a bass line joined the voices, and the room roiled, bodies writhing together to the beat around him, and for once, Harry was drawn in. Something about being in this bar at this precise moment was doing it for him.  
  
_"The way you move is a mystery..."_  
  
The performers departed the stage to join the crowd below, grabbing patrons at random to grind upon before selecting their next partner. Harry's sight spun circles through the darkness until he found he had to close his eyes to stem the visuals. The songs clanged around inside of him; he could feel them from the soles of his feet through his palms and out his fingertips. He couldn't not move; he wanted to be in it, needed to be with these people at this moment, dancing, dancing, dancing. Flashes of light and darkness, glitter and teeth and smiles and hot breath and the feeling of a hand on his hip, the brush of a beard on his neck and then suddenly someone else.   
  
Harry opened his eyes after what must have been far too long to have kept them closed, and the song had changed; he had no idea how long he'd been on the dance floor, but his body was slick with sweat, shirt clinging to his torso. His eyes met those behind a silver mask belonging to a white-blond— _another Veela?_ —and the lips beneath that mask curved into a smile, a sharp incisor biting at the lower lip, pillowy pink. It looked delicious, and Harry wanted so badly to touch this blond, to taste him. Inhibitions gone, his right hand reached up to cup the man's shoulder. He found it bony; he was so thin under the white button-down shirt he wore, and—oh god—he'd rolled his shirtsleeves up to reveal elbow-length black leather gloves, and if Harry didn't have a thing for leather or gloves before tonight, he absolutely did now. The blond turned around to dance within his arms, and when Harry's hands ghosted over his hips, he ground back gratefully, and when Harry's lips brushed the side of his neck, he leaned in, all but asking for a kiss there but Harry couldn't, not yet. Harry could imagine them together in bed; he so wanted to map out this man's body, long and lithe, all whipcord muscle and angles, what he wouldn't give to get him naked. His smell was intoxicating, the spray of citrus oils and something darker, musky. The wet on his lips tasted of salt, his dance partner's sweat; Harry wanted to bury his face in his hair like candy-floss and inhale, to memorize his smell, taste, everything. His hair was something from another world, took on the neon hues of lights scattered from disco balls suspended up on high, and he turned around to face Harry, and he was saying something, pulling back, confused, he was shaking Harry and—  
  
"I'm—" the words bubbled up from Harry unbidden but urgent, "I think I'm going to be sick."  
  
It was all he could manage as the world around him suddenly stopped spinning, and his sweat-soaked body rippled with goosebumps, instantaneously cold. The blond's eyes widened beneath his mask. His gloved hand was surprisingly strong as he gripped Harry's forearm and shouted to be heard above the din, "Well then, you'll want to come with me." He dragged him with purpose through the crowd, bodies everywhere, and suddenly there was a wall, a door. An alley, muggy and pungent with the smells of garbage left out in the summer sun and car exhaust, and it was within seconds of this air hitting his face that Harry spun around and vomited spectacularly against the alley wall.  
  
"Watch your shoes," the blond's cold voice intoned from behind him with little mercy as Harry's body continued its upheavals. The advice was appreciated, even if the delivery could be kinder. Harry shuffled his feet back a few inches to spare them the splash-back.  
  
"I shouldn't be sick," Harry mumbled once the heaves ended. He said it more to himself than to his companion as he fumbled to seek out his holstered wand and banished the pool of vomit from the ground. With that complete, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, seeking something grounding in all the mess.   
  
"As an adult with a certain degree of self-respect, I agree, you really shouldn't."  
  
The blond man's voice rumbled, low and hoarse from yelling to be heard over the din inside.   
  
"It's not yet one, and you're an absolute mess."  
  
His haughty delivery and intonation were so familiar that if Harry didn't have what felt like cotton-batting filling his brain and a thousand tequila shots in his veins, he was sure he could place it. When he looked over, the man had a cigarette in his mouth, and with a snap of his fingers, lit it. The tip flashed red in the dark as he pulled on it. He looked back at Harry with eyes a hazy colour, icy, blue, maybe; one arm crossed under the other as he blew smoke out of the side of his mouth.  
  
"No, really, I've had a handful of drinks over the last couple of hours, I can hold my liquor. This isn't normal, I, I..."  
  
Harry realized too late that he'd closed his eyes again. He opened them, and the blond was closer, worrying his bottom lip, god his mouth was so fucking sexy when he did that, Harry just wanted to reach out and touch him, it wouldn't be so bad, would it, if he reached out and touched those pink lips, what could it hurt—  
  
"What in the fuck are you doing?" The blond swatted away Harry's hand. His hand, he realized too late, that had reached out without his brain permitting it.  
  
"I'm sorry, I'm just, oh god, I don't know what I'm thinking. In there things were good, and now I'm so cold, and everything's spinning, and you look fantastic, like bloody _fantastic_ , and it's like—Merlin, I've never been drunk like this before. Or have I? Is this what blacking out is like? Can I be blacking out if I'm thinking about it?"   
  
Harry was babbling, and the warm feeling was back; he wanted to move. He rolled his shoulders experimentally and flicked energy down and out through his fingertips, his magic welling up inside him like a fountain of electricity in an open circuit.  
  
"I am so, so sorry—" Harry's hands reached up to wash over his face, but the damn mask was still on, so he pulled that off, and then suddenly, all at once, things became clear.  
  
"Fuck," he said, staring at his open palms. He violently wanted to scream.  
  
" _Fuck_ ," he yelled. He realized it wasn't all the drinks; it was the one drink with the bitter taste. He looked up at the blond, shining like a full moon against the alley's muddy night colours.   
  
"I've been poisoned. It's probably a—"   
  
"Oh!" The blond man's sudden yell cut Harry's rant short. He turned as though revealing Harry to an audience. Other than the rats scurrying around the bins, they were alone.   
  
"It's fucking you," he spat as he swung back to face Harry. "Of course, it had to be you."  
  
"What?" Harry realized too late that most magical people got flustered upon meeting him. Typically there was less exasperated yelling, but perhaps his companion was less than a fan.   
  
"It's um, me. Harry Potter." 

The man stalked up to him and then turned on his heel, letting out a growling yell. "Of all the men in all the queer bars in all of _fucking_ London, it had to be you. Jesus fucking Christ, I couldn't catch a break just this once?"

"Er. Surprise?"  
  
The wizard pulled on his smoke with what could only be described as ire.   
  
"I can't believe this is fucking happening right now. I haven't been in so much as a semi-magical bar for four fucking years, and the first time I go, of course, it's you."  
  
"I'm sorry but, you're a wizard, right? I, I'm not doing so well. I think I need St. Mungo's—"  
  
Harry was swaying again. He made a special effort to assess his safety in the alley, wondering if he was stable enough to Apparate directly to the hospital's front desk. With a huff, the blond ripped his mask off and threw it into a pile of black plastic bags behind him without a second look, revealing the pinched face of a very irate Draco Malfoy.   
  
"Oh gods no," Harry whispered, "not you. What are you doing here?"  
  
Malfoy huffed and struck a pose, honestly, was the only way to describe how he stood. One foot stuck out, a gloved hand gripping a hipbone that jut out sharp as glass. Draco fucking Malfoy, looking exactly as pointy as Harry remembered and exasperated as he ever had been with Harry's mere existence. 

It was all Harry could do but keep from screaming at the injustice at it all.   
  
"What am I doing here? What am I—listen, I don't know who it is you think you're talking to, but if I were you, I'd be a little more grateful. Show some fucking thanks, mister I-can't-keep-down-three-fucking-drinks." Malfoy was in top form, his enunciation growing crisper the longer he went at Harry.   
  
"I'm out here attempting to have a bit of good, clean fun, maybe pull one last time before I—you know what?" Malfoy shook his head, chin-length hair swishing from side to side. "What am I telling you this for? If anything, it's you who owes _me_ an explanation."  
  
"I don't owe you shit," Harry spat.  
  
"Oh, sure, fuck me for existing, right? What are you even doing here?" Malfoy asked.  
  
"It's a free country; I'm allowed to be here the same as you."  
  
"That's not what I meant, you absolute tosser," Malfoy took a step closer. "I meant this club, dancing with blokes." 

His eyebrows rose as he leaned in and spoke very slowly, as though to a child. "It's a gay club, Potter. You're not gay."  
  
Harry fidgeted. His skin felt weird. He couldn't tell what he needed, other than for this conversation to end.   
  
"You don't get to tell me what I'm not," he said at last. He was going to vomit again, whether from rage or whatever his drink had been spiked with, he couldn't tell.  
  
"You're not supposed to be fit either," Malfoy spoke to himself, though Harry could clearly still hear him, "since when did that bloody happen—don't answer that, that was a rhetorical question."  
  
Harry had to close his eyes and breathe out deeply through his nose to keep the next wave of nausea down. The fact that he'd just been called fit by Draco Malfoy should have been an explosive thought, but he barely had room to think it. 

He couldn't seriously be fighting with Draco Malfoy about this. Here. Now.   
  
"Since when?" Malfoy asked.  
  
"Since when what?" Harry responded, pinching the bridge of his nose.   
  
"Since when are you bent?"  
  
"Since, since," Harry blustered, looking around for the answer to jump out at him and finding none, yelled, "since it's none of your bloody business!"  
  
"Is too my bloody business now, you beastly pillock. I've got your sweat on me!" Malfoy pulled the trademark sneer, hands brushing at his chest. "What if your strain of imbecile is contagious? You should be so lucky that I'm still here. Honestly, Potter, you're a wreck—"  
  
Harry wondered where the sound was coming from, and only after opening his eyes—when did they close again?—and taking in the startled look of Malfoy's face, he realized that the source of the sound was himself.   
  
He snapped his mouth shut, and the sound stopped.  
  
"Did you just growl at me?" Malfoy was apoplectic, his face a picture of utter shock. "Fucking brilliant. You sure know how to pick 'em, Draco. Merlin, I ought to _kill_ myself."  
  
Harry opened his mouth again experimentally, and this time no sound escaped.

 _Better._  
  
"No. Nope. Not doing this." Malfoy threw his cigarette and ground it out with a vicious twist of his heel before turning, marching away to wrench the door to the club open.  
  
"Please don't go," Harry blurted. He hated how much it sounded like a plea, but his heart was beating double-time, and he was afraid. "I think someone's poisoned me and I can't, I can't be seen like this."  
  
Malfoy stopped. He held the door ajar but didn't step over the threshold, and Harry thought he must be hallucinating because Malfoy looked petrified right back at him.  
  
"This is my problem exactly how?" he asked.  
  
"It's probably a love potion. Maybe a botched one," Harry said.  
  
Malfoy stood still for a moment as the muffled sounds of the party raging inside spilled out into the night.   
  
"Just," Harry said, swallowing the sudden urge to cry, "please."   
  
The explosive sound of a bottle smashing against metal and a loud laugh cut through nighttime revellers' familiar sounds. Malfoy turned his head in the direction of the sound and, at last, stood back from the door, kicking it shut with more force than strictly necessary.   
  
"What makes you think that," he asked, lighting a fresh cigarette. He began to survey their fetid surroundings with evident disdain.   
  
"I've been slipped them before, and I need, I need, I need..." Harry's sentence trailed into oblivion as his ability to concentrate shut off.   
  
"First, I will not be fast to forget that you growled at me, Potter. Mark my words. Second," he took a deep drag, "as much as I am disgusted to admit how fit you seemed when your entire face was hidden—"  
  
"Please, don't right now Malfoy—"  
  
"Let me finish," he said, and Harry closed his eyes, awaiting whatever nasty thing Malfoy could think to hurl at him. "That was all very consensual back in there."  
  
Harry's heart sank. A barb was coming; he was sure of it.   
  
"What, because you were too drunk to notice it was me?" He bit his lip, wishing he could draw up some anger instead of the rising tide of panic constricting his chest. "Can you not make fun right now, Malfoy? I'm at the end of my rope."  
  
The moment drew out in silence for so long that Harry was afraid that Malfoy had walked away.   
  
"I'm not," Malfoy said, at last, the sneer gone from his voice, "drunk, that is. Or making fun."  
  
This was good. At least it was a start. The change in tone meant that maybe he'd consider being more of a help than a hindrance. Harry knew he needed all the help he could get at that moment.   
  
Malfoy sighed.  
  
"Considering you're not still trying to grind me to death, there are no love potions at play here, properly brewed or otherwise."  
  
Harry experimented with looking at Malfoy again. It was a bad idea—he swam in the streetlight, an angel in a poorly done impressionist painting.  
  
"Look, Potter, if you're asking for my help, and I rather think you should because I'm something of an expert, I think you've been the regular kind of poisoned."  
  
Harry slid down the wall and dropped his face into his hands while his stomach tried its best to fall through his body. The spinning was back and along with it a popping sound in his ears like there was water stuck in each one in turn. He couldn't hide how stricken he felt as he gazed up at Malfoy.  
  
"What, you're a professional poisoner? I'm talking to a poisoner?"  
  
Malfoy smirked. The smirk softened, widened, until he was smiling at Harry, even. In the insanity of it all, Harry distinctly thought that there was something about Malfoy when he smiled. Something sweet. 

He could be another person, almost. Milk-white skin bright and smooth and glistening with sweat. Fine hair glowing mandarin under the incandescent streetlights, swooping up and away from his angular face. His perfect, straight nose that had never been broken. Eyelashes delicate as spider webs, fanning out, the soft counterpoint to so many hard lines—or maybe it was the poison talking. Probably the poison.   
  
"No, Potter, I did not survive the Dark Lord's second coming and a tribunal by the Wizengamot to grow up to be a poisoner for Merlin's sake. Though," Malfoy grumbled, low, "I am basically a potions master, not that anyone cares."  
  
"To my point," he continued at full volume, "as a reformed ingenue of the party scene, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to drug-related things, and that's why I'm certain when I say that some tosser has dosed you. With drugs, not poison."  
  
Harry couldn't tell for how long he sat agog, looking up at his childhood nemesis. Malfoy stared back just as intently before dropping to crouch on his haunches, looking from one of Harry's eyes to the other and back again.   
  
"Do you have to be so close?" Harry asked. He could see the stubble starting in on Malfoy's cheeks, count each dark blond hair that made up his perfect, stupid, arched brows. His lips held his cigarette with the nonchalance of practice, and Harry couldn't figure out why he'd still much rather kiss them than punch them even now that he knew who they belonged to.   
  
Malfoy's exasperated sigh and eye-roll tell him told was an idiotic question to ask.  
  
"I'm not so close. I'm checking your pupils, you nitwit. They're blown, as I suspected. Have you any experience with drugs, wizard or Muggle?"  
  
Malfoy's grave face was the only thing that kept Harry from reaching a hand out to touch the upturned tip of his nose. It looked cute up close. It must be—  
  
Gloved fingers snapped in front of his face, bringing the reality of the muggy alleyway back into focus.   
  
"Er. No. No, I've never done any drugs."  
  
Malfoy snorted. Even though it was done in spite, Harry couldn't help but think how kind of adorable his face got when he did that weird little laugh.

_Talk about growing into your looks._

Harry was going mad.  
  
"Well, you have now. Come on," Malfoy moved to stand and offered Harry a hand, "up with you, you can't stay here all night. Surely you've got a friend inside I can bring you to? Where've they all gone and fucked off to in your time of need?"  
  
Harry took his hand and was jerked to his feet. He stood poorly. Shaking. He concentrated on the orange light glinting off glass fragments on the asphalt as he shook his head.   
  
"No? Alone on your birthday, looking to pull at the club, Potter? How risqué."   
  
Malfoy spoke with incredible boredom, and Harry felt a pit open in his stomach. It was similar to Embarrassment, an old friend of his, but could potentially be Sadness or the big winner on any night spent out drinking: Mortifying Self Pity.  
  
"How do you know it's my birthday?" he asked.   
  
"You do know you're famous, right?" Malfoy's exasperation seemed to swell with each passing moment. "Everyone knows your birthday. Christ, what anyone wants with you is beyond me."   
  
The pit in Harry's stomach widened to sinkhole status. A Jeep could fall in and never be seen again.   
  
"Alright, well, do you want Mungo's or not then?"  
  
"Do you think I need it?" Harry's voice came out small. Loathe as he was to admit it, he was scared, Mortifying Self-Pity be damned.   
  
"Honestly? Only if they've found a cure for your insufferable personality."   
  
Malfoy paused as though waiting for Harry's laugh at his joke. It didn't come.   
  
"Tough crowd," he said, sighing. "I'd say you've been given some dodgy ecstasy by someone who thought it would help them take advantage of you. It's probably cut with speed—everything in East London is at this point. Muggle drugs, nothing to worry about too much once you get some water in. It's generally quite fun, actually, ecstasy. A couple of years ago, I would have killed to be in your shoes. Free drugs! Though, not of the non-consensual variety, that's quite—" and then he cut himself off with a gagging sound.  
  
Harry shook his head again, frowned at Malfoy. "I'm not having any fun."  
  
"I've probably gone and spoiled their plans," Malfoy spoke to himself, eyes raking over Harry's form. For his part, Harry was struggling to stand up straight and still but refused to ask Malfoy if he could lean on him for support. He took a deep breath.  
  
"No Mungos. It'll leak, it'll become a whole," Harry waved a hang around, the word he was looking for lost in the cavern of his brain.  
  
"Thing," Malfoy supplied. He flicked the butt of his last cigarette so that it bounced off the wall not far from Harry's head. It was rude. This was Malfoy, and cute nose or not, he was still an unabashed prick when he felt like it. Which seemed to be most of the time.   
  
"I don't suppose you have any friends interesting enough to be awake at this hour?"  
  
Harry thought of Ron and Hermione, then of their desk-jobs and penchant for being in bed before the late-night comics even came on the telly. He thought of the postcards from far-flung places and realized that his few friends were nowhere near this year and shook his head no. Even Kreacher was at Hogwarts tonight.   
  
Malfoy jutted his jaw out and huffed so hard that the bit of hair that had flopped forwards into a fringe shot up at the air explosion. He was close enough that Harry could smell him—citrusy and sweet, almonds, like a crunchy croissant. He wondered if he could taste his sweat one more time if he could just—  
  
"Alright then, you sodding useless excuse for a boy wonder. Stay here, and don't do anything stupid. As in, don't do anything. At all," and with that, he stalked off back into the club, leaving Harry alone in the alleyway just in time for another wave of nausea to overtake him.   
  
This time his shoes weren't so lucky.   
  
Harry had just enough time to banish the fresh pool of sick before Malfoy slammed the alley door open, stomping back towards him with an opened plastic bottle of water that he thrust into his palm. Harry wondered as to where the banished sick went, everything that had ever been banished must have been banished to a place, and perhaps there was a—  
  
"Oi!" Malfoy clapped his hands so close to Harry's nose that he could feel the air whistling between them.   
  
"Stop looking at the fucking ground like it's going to open up and answer all your stupid questions. Wash your mouth out and drink this, the whole thing."  
  
Harry did as he was told as Malfoy continued.   
  
"Now, you're coming to mine for the night unless you're willing to let me know where your hermitage is? Hmm?"  
  
Before he could even tell what he was doing, Harry found himself shaking his head side to side. It was more out of confusion over what was happening than because of an unwillingness to share where he lived because at this point he'd much rather find out where the banished things go, but also wouldn't it be great to go with Malfoy, maybe if he was lucky he would get to be held by his—  
  
Harry felt a pinch at his side that jolted him instantly awake, breaking his stupor once more.  
  
"Stop that!" Far too late, Harry tried to bat away Malfoy's hex.   
  
"I will once you start paying attention. The sooner you hold on to me, the sooner I can put you to bed, now come on."  
  
"But," Harry swallowed thickly, "why?" His hands were shaking too much to recap the plastic water bottle, and Malfoy snatched it from him, twisting the cap back on while staring at it as though it had personally wronged him.  
  
Malfoy shrugged.  
  
"Why? What kind of question is that? I, I..." His lip curled as though the question itself was beneath him.   
  
"I refuse to have it on my head that I let you, our _saviour_ , suffocate to death in a pile of his own sick. On his birthday, no less. I'd never hear the end of it."  
  
"You're going to take care of me, so you don't get in trouble for my death." Harry was too far gone to contain his sniggering at this turn of events.   
  
Malfoy cast around, eyes wild now.   
  
"That's what I said, isn't it? You're so clearly, ugh, new."  
  
"Am not," Harry responded, automatically argumentative.  
  
"Are too. Don't you dare try to argue with me about which of us is fresh meat in a place like this. Not to mention you're alone, pathetically so, may I add—"  
  
"So are you!"  
  
"Yeah, well, that's a lot less surprising when everyone fucking hates your guts, now isn't it? Do you want my help or not, because this whole arguing bit isn't doing it for me."  
  
"But I do it for you?" 

Harry slapped a hand over his mouth as soon as the words were out, but that couldn't contain his laughter.   
  
Malfoy was momentarily too shocked for words. When he found them again, Harry had stumbled a bit, scraping his shoulder on the wall. Or maybe the ground. Something.   
  
"Potter, I'm going to let that go out of the goodness of my heart, and you are going to shut. The fuck. Up."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because," Malfoy pinched the bridge of his nose, exasperated, "clearly someone in there meant you harm one way or another, you're incapable of taking care of yourself for five bloody minutes—you're a walking disaster, just look at your hair. Not that you should be my responsibility, or anyone's, but here we are, and there it is."  
  
Perhaps it was the drugs, or maybe it was the drink, but the cold that had suffused Harry's body melted at these words. Somewhere in there, Malfoy admitted that he preferred Harry alive to dead, which felt like cause for celebration. A wide smile broke out across his face.   
  
"Malfoy?"  
  
"What, Potter?"  
  
"Can I hug you?"  
  
"Oh, for the love of all that is holy—"  
  
With eyes staring up as though the skies had something to answer for, he allowed Harry to wrap his arms securely around his torso in the facsimile of a hug. As Harry gripped tightly, he squeezed and grinned —it'd been a long time since he'd hugged another person, let alone one who smelled like a french bakery at daybreak. Harry couldn't see it, but Malfoy allowed himself a momentary smirk as he looked down at the smile on his face before he draped one arm around the shaky, sweaty body wrapped around him, and with a crack that rent the air, the pair vanished into the night. 

* * *

**Notes:**

Eep! I'm back!

This has been brewing for about...a year? Ever since I suddenly needed to read and write Drarry again after a decade-long hiatus?

I'll be posting every 1-2 weeks, and anticipate about 25 chapters, so hold on to yer butts.

This is un beta'd :( Doing my best to edit as I go :)


	2. Not Even the Weirdest Bit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Draco does a kindness and Harry and Ron learn some unexpected news from the past.

* * *

**Friday, August 1, 2003**

Harry had died.   
  
This was the only possible explanation for the pain that accompanied his skull's movement through space as he tried and failed to lurch into a seated position.   
  
If he hadn't died, something had crawled inside of him and done just that. Maybe his insides had shrivelled, and his brain and heart hadn't gotten the memo yet. 

He wondered if it was possible that your essence could expire in hell and leave your shell behind. Perhaps he was now the husk of the person once known as Harry Potter.  
  
Perhaps this was hell, then.   
  
He experimented with opening one eyelid a crack and was greeted by a softly lit room. Greyish and white, with blobs of shapes—furniture, a door opened to the world beyond, all fuzzy to his naked eye.   
  
Nothing like the dark tones of his bedroom. The linens smelled too fresh—of lavender and a hot tumble. 

The sound of street traffic drifted in from a window to his left, engines revving and the occasional bubble of laughter from a faraway conversation—so much louder than what he was used to at home, where the wards kept street noise decidedly out. He wasn't in any of the bedrooms, drawing rooms, or even hallways of Grimmauld. Definitely not Ron and Hermione's place either.  
  
A chill spread through Harry's body as he realized that this was a place he'd never been before and that he hadn't a clue as to how he'd ended up here.  
  
He opened both eyes, flexed his fingers. Considering the pain in his skull, the cocoon of bedding around him, and the crinkle of down under his head, he probably wasn't dead. He wasn't sure about how hell was outfitted, but he was confident that they didn't stock sheets anywhere near this soft.  
  
Sitting up very slowly and grasping around at the side table, his fingers knocked around for his glasses' familiar shape. Finding none, he summoned what little strength he had and murmured the incantation for the sight-sharpening charm he'd been taught in first-year Auror training. It would only last an hour or so, but that should be enough for him to find his bearings and need be, escape. 

Able to see clearly, he ascertained that he was, indeed, alone. Nothing felt broken, and he wasn't chained to anything. A peek under the covers confirmed that he was naked save for his pants and socks. 

Harry groaned loudly. The remainder of his clothes—he _definitely_ left the house last wearing clothes—were nowhere to be seen. The groan deepened as he looked at his hands, front and back. They were covered in glitter. So much glitter.   
  
"Ah, the Chosen One awakens," a familiar voice intoned as Draco Malfoy appeared in the doorway. He wore no glamour, as the purplish colour under his eyes spoke to sleepless nights, plural. He padded over in heather grey track pants and bare feet to sit in the elegant wing-back chair positioned near the bed's head, his fingers poking out from the overlong sleeves of a grey Nike hoodie to wrap around a mug of something steaming. He blew on it, eerily light eyes fixing Harry with a thoughtful look. Since they'd last seen one another during the post-war trials, the power of time had made his features more striking. How had Harry gone to school with this person and only thought of him as pointy? He was ethereal—odd, even—his gaze reptilian in its cold glare. 

"Or do you prefer to be called our saviour? Or does your Auror status mean I'm meant to address you as Auror Potter?" He tilted his head, taking in Harry, unblinking. "The papers simply can't seem to choose. Someone ought to provide them with a style guide," he said conversationally.  
  
If he somehow wasn't already dead and this indeed wasn't hell, Harry was sure that the heart-attack he was experiencing would finish the job off nicely. Because here was Draco Malfoy, sitting not an arms-length away. Draco Malfoy, a man he hadn't seen, let alone heard from in five full years, gaze travelling very obviously down Harry's naked torso and back up again, resting at last back on his face.   
  
"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said. Harry was speechless.

He watched Malfoy suck his bottom lip into his mouth a little and bite it from the inside. One of his incisors poked out a little longer than the rest, and as the thought _isn't that sort of cute for an absolute git_ ran across his brain, he realized this idea was an echo of those he had last night. At the club.  
  
About Malfoy.  
  
"Normally," Malfoy said, "this is the part where I'd offer to take you out for breakfast."  
  
A tiny squeak of pain emitted from Harry's body. He wasn't in control any more than he knew what the hell was going on.  
  
"If you could play your part correctly, you'd try to impress me with someplace that does the best hollandaise or some rubbish, and I'd silently judge you over orange juice and overpriced toast. If all went well, you'd be out of my hair by half-eleven, and we'd never see each other again. But I'd hazard to guess," here he squinted at Harry, pursing his lips mock-thoughtfully, "I'd guess that you don't know a seven-minute egg from scrambled, poor idiot thing that you are. So, what's it going to be then, Potter?"  
  
"Did, did we—" 

A wave of nausea swept up within Harry, knocking the words from his mouth. He swallowed it back but couldn't break Malfoy's stare, couldn't look away from the train wreck that was his life.

"We," Harry croaked, "we didn't."  
  
Malfoy held his eyes a moment longer before erupting in belly-deep laughter, the sound pounding Harry's brain into submission.  
  
"God, Potter, your face. Your fucking _face_ ," Malfoy crowed. "What I wouldn't give for a camera right now."

"Fuck you, Malfoy," Harry growled, pulling the covers over his head. He'd be beet red in a second, half from the flush of hangover sweats, half from utter embarrassment.

"Why can't I just die for real, for once," Harry groaned into the duvet.

"Oh, don't be so macabre. I want it _framed_ ," Malfoy could barely speak around his laughter, doubling over. Harry pulled back the covers to glare at him, but it was useless. The brat had to put down his mug to keep from spilling its contents; that was how hard he was laughing.

"I'm serious," Harry said, "I don't know how the fuck I got here." He took a cooling breath, his temper rising along with the thudding between his temples. Malfoy's laugh quietened into little coughs, mercifully.

"No," Malfoy said, using the hem of his sleeves to dry eyes overflowing with mirthful tears—he was laughing so hard he was crying, for god's sake. 

"No, of course, we didn't shag. As much as you might have wanted to," Malfoy added in what might be the most mortifying afterthought Harry had ever heard.  
  
"I... what..."  
  
"Ecstasy does that," Malfoy said, sniffing. He took a sip of his coffee, an almost-smile creeping onto his face. "Don't act so surprised, of course you wanted to. I mean, look at me."

"You're not my type," Harry said automatically, choosing to ignore talk of ecstasy for the moment.

"Is that so?" Malfoy said, appraising Harry. "You're a terrible liar, you know. I'm everyone's type."

"That doesn't even make sense," Harry said, but Malfoy continued as though he hadn't heard him at all.

"Come now, you're hurting my feelings. I may be an elderly twink—"

"You're not _elderly_ , Malfoy, you're twenty-three," Harry ground out. Malfoy waved a hand. 

"Which is basically fifty in twink-years, trust me, I think I would know." He gave Harry a knowing look, and it was all Harry could do to keep his mouth shut. "In all honesty, you probably would have rutted up against a cactus if I'd conjured one and put the thought into your head, which, I have to remind myself to try should we ever end up in this scenario again. But I digress—I would never take advantage that way." His nose wrinkled up as though the thought itself had a rancid odour.

"It's beyond disgusting that someone tried to—with you. I would never." He shook his head, suddenly serious. Harry watched as he absentmindedly tucked stray strands of hair that had fallen into his eyes behind his ears. He wore it loose and a little long now, and even dark, shower-damp and bearing the lines of a comb, Harry thought that it looked, well, good, highlighting how high his cheekbones were as it fell in curtains that brushed just underneath of them.

Harry hated that his stupid, perfect hair could still look stupidly perfect even long, even damp, even _parted in the fucking middle_ , which was a recipe for disaster for anyone other than Malfoy, of course. 

Maybe he really was everyone's type, Harry thought with a hot spike of an unknown emotion. He wanted it to be Anger, nice and pure and straightforward Anger, though he was reasonably sure it fell neatly into the Jealousy category.

"No, Potter," Malfoy spoke, bringing Harry back to reality. He realized that he'd been staring, contemplating Malfoy's hair for longer than could possibly be reasonable, "you're simply my incredibly unwelcome houseguest."  
  
Harry flopped back into bed and pulled a spare pillow over his face to groan loudly into it. At least from this position, his head felt less likely to roll free from his body.

"Have you any hangover potion?" he mumbled into it.

He removed it slightly to peer over at Malfoy, who shook his head, looking far too amused for Harry's liking.  
  
"No, I don't stock it. Pity for you." Harry cursed—of course, he wouldn't have anything as banal and useful as that. 

"Do you remember anything of last night?" Malfoy asked.  
  
Harry shook his head as much as he could muster. Malfoy responded with a little hum, opening the side table's drawer to retrieve a packet of cigarettes. He slammed it shut, made a happy little sound when Harry groaned again.  
  
"Could you be any louder? _Accio_ wand," Harry muttered, throwing the pillow from his face towards the bed's foot. A thrill ran through him when the familiar length of wood smacked into his palm.   
  
"So what they say about you and wandless magic is true then? Show off," Malfoy said. He lit the cigarette with a snap of his fingers, and then pulled his wand out to cast a charm to siphon away the smoke as it rose around him.  
  
Harry returned his barb with an eye-roll that might cost him his life. Something about the red glow of the lit cigarette was familiar, but he couldn't place it. It didn't surprise him that Malfoy smoked, somehow. He couldn't concentrate on these thoughts and instead used his newly found wand to transfigure the extra pillow into a glass and filled it with life-saving water with a muttered _Aguamenti_. Malfoy made a little huffing sound as Harry pounded the entire thing.  
  
"I would have gotten you a glass if you'd asked," he said acidly. "I expect you to replace that pillow."  
  
"I'll transfigure it back," Harry said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "If you were any sort of host, you'd have offered the water in the first place."  
  
"As if you can transfigure a linen-silk blend."  
  
"Watch me."  
  
Harry filled the glass again and gulped greedily during the pause, while Malfoy sipped his coffee. They held eye contact for the duration, and it was...weird. But Harry couldn't look away; he'd never really been able to back away from any sort of competition, especially one with Malfoy. With his mouth no longer feeling as though it were coated in dust, Harry sat up properly and surveyed his surroundings more closely.

"So this is your place now. We're still in London?"

"Chelsea," Malfoy said. Harry contained another eye-roll but frowned at the insinuation of what the neighbourhood choice meant.

"But there are no magical dwellings in Chelsea," he said, tone questioning. The more he looked around, the more these seemingly incongruent pieces of the puzzle were making sense. He couldn't feel magic wafting from everything he touched the way one could in magical buildings, and the characteristic buzzing feeling of being in wizarding-space wasn't there. Just cream-coloured walls and gleaming parquet flooring, simple furniture with some houseplants and framed charcoal drawings for decoration. It was suspiciously...normal. 

Malfoy sipped his coffee. "And?" he said. Harry sat up a little higher, leaning back against the padded headboard. He tried not to notice Malfoy's almond-shaped eyes darting low again, no doubt to the scars the public didn't know about.

"It's...not what I expected."

"What, not enough gilded statues of dragons and Muggleborns screaming from cages?" Malfoy grumbled. "I'll remind you that Malfoy Manor is a _manor_ —of course it's filled with relics and furniture to suit travelling hordes back when they came through in the fifteenth century, and families of fourteen were the norm. This is a flat, Potter, my flat, and I'll thank you for keeping from ridiculing my—"

"It's modern," Harry said, cutting Malfoy off mid-diatribe. "A new build, and in a Muggle building. It's not what I would have imagined. I would have pegged you for something a little more..."

"Fussy?" Malfoy asked eyes narrowed. Harry huffed and threw his hands up.

"I was going to say classical. I mean, you grew up in Wiltshire," he squeezed his eyes shut against the pounding in his skull from so much talking. "I only expected—I don't know—something of the countryside. Bucolic." Harry got a raised eyebrow for that comment. He didn't bother to defend his use of the word. "Or more medical, I don't know, you're so—particular." Harry watched as Malfoy's eyes widened at these continued guesses as to his sense of taste. "I don't know what I'm saying, I'm really hungover. It's, um, it's nice."

They sat in stunned silence for a while, the ticking of a clock from another room clearly audible. As the seconds ticked on, Harry became increasingly aware that he was only covered by his pants and the blanket covering his lap, which he had to force himself not to clutch at it to cover the rest of him. He wasn't ashamed; he just preferred to share his body with people in near-total darkness, usually. Or better yet, with clothes on, where they couldn't trace the locket-shaped scar, for example, and ask _Where'd you get that one?_ Yet here he was sat only in pants with Malfoy fully dressed. Harry wished desperately that he could have woken up anywhere but here. 

"Look at you," Malfoy said at long last. "Multi-syllable words and everything."

"Is this what talking with you is like for everyone?" Harry asked. 

"I'm sorry," Malfoy said. His head tilted the other way. "I don't follow."

"Are you ever just, like, civil for five minutes?"  
  
Malfoy stared at Harry, his face blank until, incredibly, he snorted. The kind of laugh one gave when surprised. The kind of laugh Harry had never, in all the years he'd known Malfoy, seen him give. It was undignified and real and signalled an easy-going manner that was difficult to conceive as related to Malfoy. He never used to laugh like that before. Not with Harry, at least.  
  
"Tried it once," Malfoy said, regaining his composure. "I nearly died from holding back all the acerbic wit I was clearly born to share. Yes, it's like this with everyone lucky enough to enjoy my company. Bit of fun back and forth until one person dies."  
  
Harry didn't mean to, but he cracked a smile, then tried to hide it, his face muscles going wobbly. It was possibly the most confused he'd ever felt in his life.

He was drained and probably still drunk, and maybe, he thought, if he begged, Hermione would find him a Time-Turner, and he could have a do-over and never end up in a bed of Malfoy's in the first place.  
  
"My favourite therapist once told me that she liked seeing me because I arrived bitter. Some people, the smart ones, they like it. Talking to me. Anyway, stop pulling me from my train of thought," Malfoy frowned at Harry even though he remained silent, and it was Malfoy who was interrupting himself. 

"Last night. You were dosed by some idiot. What they wanted with you considering your lack of—let's be judicious and call it house-training—is anyone's guess. I couldn't leave you to die some tragic death, so I brought you here to watch over you."

Bits of this came back to Harry. Mandarin-coloured hair. Some shouting; a fair amount of vomiting. 

"I do remember. The alley, feeling cold. Rats." Waves of pain threatened to overtake him as a new thought formed. It was a thought he should have had right from the beginning. "What were you even doing there?"

"You were on a similar train of thought last night," Malfoy responded, an eyebrow rising, his look decidedly unimpressed. "If you've forgotten all the greatest hits, let me summarize for you: I'm gay. Very gay. As in, I do on occasion leave my home to find a likely-looking man, and once I've found him, the two of us, or sometimes more, enjoy taking off our cl—"

"No, I remember that part," Harry said, sighing. "It's only—"

"I'm allowed to go out, Potter. Perhaps you forget that I wasn't sentenced to a life of eternal penitence."

"No," Harry said, "I mean at Gollybean. It's a mixed club. Mixed with Muggles." He looked pointedly at Malfoy, waiting for him to take the bait.

Malfoy's face was stone. "I'm fully aware of what is meant by the term 'mixed,' Potter."

"So you weren't afraid that you'd end up dancing with one by accident? That you'd get their inferiority all over you?"

"Dancing with a Muggle would have been a very demure outcome of my going clubbing last night," Malfoy said. "It's quaint, almost, you Gryffindors and your paltry understanding of sex outside of the most boring confines of, like, _going steady with my childhood love_ , it's all so—" he fluttered a hand, "twee."

Harry frowned as Malfoy pulled on his cigarette. He seemed too pleased with himself.

"Am I supposed to believe that you're an advocate for Muggle-rights now, then?" Harry said. 

"This would all make much more sense if it was a conversation with my parents." Malfoy's voice dropped deadly low. His mask was slipping. "I feel like I'm having déjà-vu."  
  
"I don't know what you're trying to pull here, Malfoy, but I'm not falling for it."

"Yes, because I must be lying if I'm to show a shred of decency," Malfoy snapped. "Must be keeping them to experiment on, or using the blood of their babies in my skincare routine, don't I?"

"I didn't say—"

"It's funny," he continued, though it was clear he found it anything but, "when you're the baddie, you're supposed to show contrition, to change, but when you go and really do it, the very people who condemned you always seem the most disappointed by your change of heart. You'd rather me forever be the monster I was as a child than grow into a decent adult, wouldn't you?"

"I've never known you to be decent before, Malfoy," Harry said, "colour me fucking surprised." He rarely sounded so spiteful as he did now.

"Really?" Malfoy asked. Harry had hit a nerve. 

"Never?" Malfoy said, looking him directly in the eye, a challenge. "I suppose pretending not to recognize a face I'd known for years hardly counts for much, at least not when you're me." Harry opened his mouth to retort, but Malfoy continued, voice quiet and pained. "Even after all my years of indoctrination and training, I couldn't go against the innate sense everyone but snake face and his most loyal followers felt—to protect Harry Potter, at all costs."

They lapsed into another spiky silence. Harry looked away first and bit his tongue, desperate not to think back to that incident. He didn't like the memories that came along with Malfoy. 

Hate churned in his empty stomach. Harry looked up and watched as Malfoy tapped the ash from his cigarette over his shoulder, where it disappeared into thin air. The colour had drained from his face, but otherwise, he seemed unperturbed. He hated that Malfoy could look so cool, so composed while his insides writhed with all these conflicting emotions. He wanted to punch something. He wanted Malfoy to remain punchable. It was easier that way.

It seemed Malfoy wasn't much interested in going deeper into their shared past, either. 

"You wanted the sofa," Malfoy said at last, by way of breaking the ice that was forming between them. 

"What?" Harry asked.

"Last night. Me, being the piece of shit that I am, brought you back here before you were totally incoherent, and you wanted to sleep on the sofa. But it's much easier to replace a set of sheets than an entire piece of furniture, so here you are."

"Why would you have had to replace—"

"You decided," Malfoy speaking over Harry, "on your own mode of dress to sleep in and, for whatever reason, promptly banished the majority of your clothes. Which is both when and why you lost wand privileges."  
  
Harry closed his eyes as Shame, perhaps his oldest drinking buddy, arrived. Banishing his clothes was a stupid thing he'd done before, meaning his wallet and all its useful contents were gone too. What else had his drunk, high self gotten into? Or, god forbid, said. Guilt tugged at him. He was being at best, temperamental, and, at worst, a downright prick. Not that anyone could blame him.   
  
"I'm sorry," he said, wringing his hands. "You didn't have to do any of this. I'll, I'll, replace anything I broke—did I? Break anything? Or, did I do anything foolish? God, fuck, I am—"  
  
"Spare me the selfless routine, please," Malfoy said into his coffee mug. "You didn't break anything. My belongings remain, incredibly, intact. Other than that pillow and cover—which you do owe me, and I will be inspecting your transfiguration work closely."

"Malfoy," Harry started. 

"What did I say about sparing me the whole bit? Stop," Malfoy made a face as though Harry was doing something mortifying, like pissing the bed or howling. Harry shut his mouth, and Malfoy's face started to un-crumple. 

"Other than soiling those sheets with whatever that swill you call cologne is, my things are fine. And while my time is valuable to me, a few hours of sleep lost to babysitting you isn't worth the time it would take to draw up an invoice. Let's call it even."  
  
"You liked my cologne just fine last night," Harry mumbled, his mouth working on automatic while his brain pounded away inside his skull. He froze upon realizing that while he was okay with thinking it, that string of words hadn't been meant to be said aloud.  
  
"Sorry," he apologized to the duvet. "That was childish."

His cheeks burned as a sliver of memory bubbled up. Of noticing a mischievous smile beneath a silver mask. Of thin wrists and surprisingly strong hands; of a lithe body pressing, damp with perspiration against his own. Of a mouth grazing his neck, something so close to a kiss at his pulse point. A jolt flared in Harry's belly, sending a very confusing shot of blood directly to his cock.  
  
Malfoy stared at him. It was not unlike the feeling of being watched by a cat, unblinking. Or a dragon, now that Harry thought about it. Definitely reptilian. If Harry thought he felt naked before, it was nothing compared to this feeling of being seen _through_ somehow. Malfoy didn't respond for a long time until he came to some sort of decision and snapped back to himself, averting his gaze as he brushed non-existent lint from his lap.   
  
"It wasn't your cologne that I found interesting last night," he said quietly. "Let's leave it at that, shall we?"  
  
He rose to leave, fingertips emerging from a shirtsleeve to point at the room's far corner. "Floo's there in the corner. I've got to be going." 

As he reached the threshold, Harry realized this was probably his one chance to express his gratitude. To say something significant, something that sat out in the open between them while remaining resolutely unspoken. As much as he might hate having to deal with the messy knot of feelings and histories that came along with it.  
  
"Malfoy, look," he ground out the words, "thank you. Seriously. I owe you."  
  
Malfoy stopped in the doorway, looking down at his feet. Harry watched as he scrunched his toes up on the hardwood. This talk made him nervous, too.

"Let's not get into who owes whom what in this room, shall we?" He let a cascade of hair fall to cover his face. The effect was docile and soft, two things Harry had never thought of as pertaining to Malfoy. "You don't owe me anything, Potter. Let it go," he said softly.  
  
"No, Malfoy, listen," Harry exhaled, closing his eyes and drawing on the last stores of his depleted energy and courage. "Last night, I was meant to—come out. Honestly. Properly." He swallowed hard when Malfoy looked up at him, verifying that Harry wasn't pulling his leg. It knocked a bit of the air from his lungs, that look.

"There was a whole plan, and that's all been bunged up now I expect and people, they just—" Harry broke off, worrying the fabric of the coverlet between his fingers. It was soft too. It had been kind for Malfoy to have put him in such a comfortable bed. "They don't know yet. About me."  
  
"Whatever it is you're about to ask me, don't," Malfoy said. Harry wished he could make out his eyes, but they were hidden again behind curtains of hair. "I'll consider it an insult that you even think you have to." 

There was a kind edge to Malfoy's generally sharp voice that surprised Harry. He was doing the unthinkable after he'd done so many unimaginable things over the last night. He was doing Harry a favour.  
  
"I know, Potter," he said before letting loose a deep sigh. For a moment, blink, and you'd miss it, his eyes met Harry's. 

"For once, I'm not the enemy. Don't worry about me." Harry must have hallucinated because he was sure that he caught the flash of a smile that could only be described as sad.

"Good luck," Malfoy said quietly, and then he left.

* * *

 **Sunday, August 3, 2003**  
  
"Come on, out with it."  
  
Harry heard Hermione's command very clearly but refused to bow to pressure too quickly. 

"Out with what?" He continued to dissect the crumb of his slice of fudge cake with utmost scrutiny. She scoffed, elbowing the throw pillow at her side into submission. 

"Are we really going to do this?" she asked, voice light.   
  
"What do you mean?" Harry sliced a fresh bite with his fork, giving it his utmost attention. "This cake should be quite stale by now—"  
  
Hermione gave a dramatic sigh. "Harry, we've been so patient, won't you please—"  
  
"—I'd like to know what Molly uses in the soak. She's outdone herself, she has, it's—"  
  
"Harry James Potter, don't make us drag it out of you, we've only been waiting three entire days."   
  
Without looking, Harry knew that Hermione's eyes were boring holes into the side of his head, but he couldn't cave so easily. After over a decade of friendship, he might share nearly everything with his best friends, but that didn't mean that he had to offer it easily. Or enjoy it.   
  
"It's not a big deal—" he started to say.  
  
"Let me stop you right there, mate. The last time you said something was not a big deal—do you want me to do it, or do you want Hermione to?" Ron said.  
  
Harry could _hear_ Ron's shit-eating grin; that's how wide it was. The trio sat in the drawing-room, one of few rooms in Grimmauld Place that Harry had refurbished for daily use. No matter how much puttering Harry managed, offering whisky and butterbeer, fighting with Kreacher over who would serve the cake and on which set of china, it was only a matter of time before the couple began to poke at the erumpet in the room.  
  
"Oh Ronald, it would be my _pleasure_ —"

"Guys, no, please, I just—" Harry started, but Hermione continued to speak over him.  
  
"It was such a beautiful day in spring, and Harry'd come over for Sunday brunch—"  
  
"Hermione," Harry dropped his head into folded arms, staring at the worn carpet beneath him.  
  
"And you said, 'Harry, how's the day treating you?' to which Harry replied, 'So far, so good, it's not a big deal or anything, but I did have something to tell you.'"  
  
"To which I, thinking that it couldn't possibly be by any means big news, said 'And what's that?' to which you replied—do you want to do this part Hermione, or shall I?"   
  
Harry rolled back onto the carpet, covering his face. He groaned audibly into his hands. This did not deter them.  
  
"You two are the fucking worst friends, it's friends off after this," he muttered, "I'm never telling you anything again." Hermione merely increased her volume to speak over him.  
  
"Ronald, you sweet dear, I'd love to do this part; it's only my favourite. To which you," Hermione leaned down to poke at an exposed strip of Harry's belly with her dessert fork, which Harry, unsuccessfully, blindly, tried to kick away, "you, you weird little oaf, to which you said 'It's only that I'm thinking of taking up that post with the Hogwarts Board of Trustees and I'm gay.'"  
  
"You two, you just love your little joke," Harry couldn't help but sulk. He sat up straight again, only to watch both Ron and Hermione dissolving into laughter over the incident for what felt like the hundredth time.  
  
"And then Ron dropped the eggs and said—"  
  
"'That's all then? Alright mate, good thing I wasn't holding a baby'."  
  
"Hardy har har, it's a right surprise that I'm not more forthcoming then, is it?" Harry grumbled. He heaved an enormous chunk of cake into his mouth to assuage his petulant anger. The chocolate mollified him, if only very slightly.  
  
Hermione snorted, eyes brimming with unspent tears brought on by her laughter. Harry, uncharitably, hoped she choked on her drink. If only a little.  
  
"Harry, come off it. You know we love you. It was beyond confusing to get the papers on Friday and not a spec of your big news, and then your note was so cryptic—"  
  
"'Had a weird night, tell you Sunday.' It's like you couldn't possibly include less information in a letter if you tried to mate. Honestly, we've been going spare trying to figure out what your definition of weird is." Ron slid the bottle across the coffee table. "We can't help but poke fun. But we really are curious. How was your birthday? Did you skive off, or—"  
  
"No," Harry heaved a vast sigh, deciding he could spit it all out if only he didn't have to look at either of them. Continuing to pick apart the crumb of his cake would suffice as a distraction.  
  
"No, I got all done up and went to the club. It's nice for what it is, I suppose. It could be, er, fun. We could go together sometime. Anyway, everything was going fine until I was, um, drugged?"   
  
The couple gasped in unison, to which Harry held up a hand to stop the assault of questions before they could begin.   
  
"Okay, yes, I was drugged, and no, I didn't go to hospital; don't get me started on how it would have been leaked. We're pretty sure that it was a Muggle drug, ecstasy, but I'm honestly fine, that's not even the weirdest bit—"  
  
"Who's we in all this, did you—"

"Oh, Harry, you should have told—"  
  
"I'm fine!" Harry snapped. "Just let me finish, and then you can do the whole exploding with questions part."  
  
Hermione and Ron looked pointedly at each other, as though each was telepathically telling the other to shut up. Harry sighed again, ate a large chunk of cake as slowly as possible, and washed it down with a hefty swig of whisky.  
  
"Yeah, so, as luck would have it or whatever, I started to feel unwell and the bloke I was dancing with—don't go waggling your eyebrows just yet Ron—he, er, he helped me get some fresh air and figured out what the fuck was going on and helped get me right again and I, oh how do I say this? I er, he took me back to his place—no, Ron, seriously you've got to stop—cause I was far too gone to deal with the press and all that. Victoria had an absolute shit-fit about it Friday, mind you; before I told her all this too. So yeah, it turned out fine, nothing happened with this bloke even, he was really, er, sweet about the whole thing? He's a wizard and didn't, you know, nothing's leaked, and most people, even good people, would have sold the story one way or another so, er yeah. That's basically it."  
  
"Who's the wizard, then? Anyone we know?" Hermione's eyebrows were pulled down the way they got when she read an article that wasn't sourced well enough to her standards. She was eerily good at finding the holes in Harry's sentences.

Ron hadn't been able to wipe the suggestively knowing look off his face this entire time, and it was as he went to set his empty cake plate on the table and grabbed the bottle to refill their glasses that Harry said, "Well, as it turns out, it was Malfoy."  
  
The crash of the bottle smashing into the tabletop was followed so quickly by the _crack_ of Kreacher Apparating into the room that they each jumped twice; Ron letting out two, successive, tiny screams. 

With a snap of his bony fingers, the table's shattered glass reassembled itself once more into a flat pane, the bottle righting itself on top. Kreacher directed a mutinous glare at Ron, croaking, "If Master would stop acting beneath his station and allow Kreacher to do the serving, the idiots wouldn't being destroying the things." He then Apparated away, leaving total silence and stillness in his wake. 

Harry reached for his glass for a steadying gulp, and the spell was broken.  
  
"Malfoy?" Ron squeaked.  
  
Harry nodded, "Yeah. Malfoy."  
  
"Malfoy." This time Ron's voice had a slightly steadier quality. He stared dazedly at Harry, as though waiting for the rest of the joke to be revealed.  
  
"Mm-hmm. Yep. Draco Malfoy."  
  
"You've slept in Malfoy's bed."  
  
Harry winced. "Er, well, that's not what I said. I'm pretty sure it was a guest bed."  
  
"And you're saying Malfoy was sweet. To you."  
  
Harry could feel a hot prickle at the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the alcohol. Before he could say anything, Hermione came back to herself, nodding and humming thoughtfully.  
  
"How's he doing then?" she asked, curling more deeply into the couch.  
  
Harry shrugged, confused at this line of questioning.   
  
"Seems fine. He's got a nice flat," Harry said,

"Here in London?" she asked. 

Harry nodded, "Yeah, Chelsea. So I suppose he's not at the Manor anymore. He was still, you know, _Malfoy_ —"  
  
"You mean a right twat," said Ron. 

Harry nodded, but his face still scrunched up in thought. The term twat wasn't sitting on Malfoy's shoulders quite as comfortably as it once had.  
  
"Well, yeah, sort of, but it was like. Even when he wasn't quite polite, he also wasn't being outright rude? And like I said, he could have sold the story and—"  
  
"Wait! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait."  
  
Ron stared bleakly off into the distance, a broken record stuck on a single word.  
  
"Uh, Ron? You okay there?"   
  
"Wait," Ron shook his head to clear it, finally looking Harry in the eye.   
  
"So Malfoy's gay then too?"  
  
Harry nodded, wondering if it was weird that this is the first time he'd really meditated on this fact. Ron collapsed into his seat.  
  
"Okay, wow, Harry, mate. Again, I'm saying this as a friend, your definition of what is and isn't a big deal has got to change. It's totally out of whack. This is perhaps the definition of a pretty big deal if you ask me." He shook his head in wonder. "How'd we never notice?"  
  
"Is it, though, Ron?" Hermione gave him a reproachful look and seemed surprised when she turned it on Harry to have him shrug noncommittally. 

"Forgetting for a moment the fact that nobody in our year came out while at school, it's not as though we ever got to know him. How would we know if he were whatever-sexual?" Harry hummed his ascent at this, privately glad that Hermione reined in Ron when he strayed a bit too far into essentialism for Harry's liking. 

"It hasn't got anything to do with his being a prat, which was on full display. As far as I know, he's been out of the limelight since the trials. We wouldn't exactly be the first to know, you know?"  
  
"'Wouldn't exactly be the first to know,' that's not what I was on about at all," Ron grumbled.  
  
"I saw him actually, maybe two years ago," she continued, "at the Ministry Halloween party. I figured we could ignore each other the whole time, but he came right for me. I can't believe I never told you two this story," Hermione was pulled from her aside when she caught the renewed look of incredulity on Ron's face.   
  
She frowned at him. "Oh, pish!" 

"Come on," Ron cajoled. "How could you have not brought this up by now?" 

"It was the night Angelina and George announced their engagement," she said, tossing a throw pillow at his head, "give a witch a break."

"Alright, alright, break it up, you two," Harry chided from the floor. Things felt friendly, but a dark undercurrent was there, his smile feeling forced. He reckoned he wasn't truly over his drug hangover yet—his feelings felt oddly muted. He smiled wider, promising to be cordial while his friends were still in his home. Hermione bit her lip, settling back into her seat. 

"It was so weird—he was perfectly civil."

"Was not," Harry said. 

"He was," Hermione nodded emphatically, messy curls shaking around her face, "it was wild!"  
  
"We are all talking about the same Malfoy, yeah?" Ron said, earning him an eye-roll from his girlfriend. He attempted to poke her side but was stopped in his tracks by a glare that could kill. Harry watched, amused if a little jealous at the ease of their companionship. He quickly stamped the feeling down as it always led to him wondering and then worrying about whether his inability to maintain an intimate relationship pointed to a bigger problem, that he was broken somehow. He was glad to have their bickering interrupt his thoughts.  
  
"Yes, this wasn't someone under Polyjuice, Ron. He came right up to me and said, 'Granger, I know I'm the last person you want to talk to, and I can't blame you.' And I think I—well it wasn't graceful, I spilt some of my drink on myself then." Ron grimaced, and Hermione rubbed her chin, wincing a bit at the memory. 

"Yeah, not my finest moment. And I expected him to go in on that, but he just cleaned me up and went on about asking for a bit of my time to apologize. Haughty, like, 'but you needn't even grant me that. Only know that I mean to someday and that I mean it'. And I must have just stood there gaping at him for so long that he kept going." She poked at a chunk of ice in her glass, eyes following her fingertip. "It was quite touching, actually."  
  
"You've got to be kidding me. Malfoy?" Ron asked. He looked as though he'd seen a ghost doing something unseemly.  
  
"Honest to Merlin, he did. He said he'd done some counselling," Hermione said.  
  
"No amount of counselling could cure his brand of dickishness. Do wizards even do counselling? Is that a thing?" Harry wondered aloud.   
  
"My thoughts exactly," Hermione said with a tip of her glass towards Harry. "It's a Muggle invention, to begin with. It's rare for people with magic to seek it out. Especially purebloods. Especially—"

"Malfoy," Ron supplied.

"—yes, Ronald, _Malfoy_. And then he went on to say he was truly sorry and that if I ever wanted to talk about it, that he had an open door." She shrugged. "It was bizarre, but I believed him. It was sincere. He looked about ready to fall through a hole in the earth, and I think he even cried a bit."

Ron shook his head. "Crocodile tears," he said.

Hermione pursed her lips together, looking off into the distance. "I believed him, I really did. Haven't seen him since, but it felt good. That maybe even one of the Slytherins in our year could come round to sense. And him, of all people. That's an achievement, in its own way."  
  
Harry hummed in agreement. Bizarre was exactly how his life felt ever since the masks had come off, and Draco Malfoy suddenly popped back into it.   
  
"I think he had a bit of a rough go of it after the war and all, but I guess he turned it around somehow. Last I heard he was in school somewhere," Hermione trailed off, her eyes trained on the melting ice cubes as she spun them around her now empty glass.  
  
"And you two call yourself friends," Ron broke the silence with a huff, "keeping stories like these to yourselves. Well, let me tell you, next time something really juicy happens, I'm going to keep it to myself." He pointed at Hermione, swung around the point at Harry, donning his most serious look. "For years. Give you a taste of your own medicine, I will."  
  
Harry and Hermione snorted in unison.   
  
"Sure, Ron," says Harry, catching Hermione's giggles and laying back down onto the carpet, eager for a change of subject "you do that."

* * *

**Notes** :

Thanks to everyone for reading and leaving kudos + bookmarking!

I love your comments and questions! This entire story is story-boarded and 80% of it is written. It's a bit of a slow burn, this story earns its 'E' rating...we'll get there by Chapter 6, I promise you. Things of a friendly and emotional nature need to take place first.

Next chap out mid-September 2020 (no later than the 13th).

xo minta


	3. Tell-all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's surrounded by journos and Draco's not impressed.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Anxiety attacks

* * *

**August 2003**

The early weeks of August passed much like the weeks that preceded them for Harry—stretches of absolute boredom punctuated by bouts of anxiety. The schedule was giving him fresh ulcers, he was sure of it.

The boredom came first, accompanying the swooping depressive episode that followed his birthday weekend. He thought it was a usual bout of doldrums, typically serviceable with tipples of whisky, grinning and bearing it, and starting fights with Kreacher. But when Monday turned to Tuesday turned to Wednesday, and he hadn't bothered to change his pants, he realized that he wasn't doing well and hadn't the energy to care anything about it. He was lucky that Luna caught wind of what had happened by way of Hermione and dropped in on him unannounced with a freshly brewed tincture to set him to rights.

"Why does anyone do drugs," Harry lamented from the lounge floor, teeth fuzzy from lack of care. He felt low without reason or end, the minutes melting into hours that meant nothing, liminal space where sustenance held no allure. Luna poured him a capful of her secret weapon and watched him gag to swallow it, smoothing his hair back from his damp forehead as he coughed at its acrid flavour.

"What the fuck is in that, Luna," Harry croaked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Oh—dandelion root, fennel seed," she said airily, counting off her fingertips. "A few things from Dad's garden that you probably shouldn't know about."

"I'm not an Auror anymore; I could give a shit about your Dad's gillyweed operation," Harry said, lying on the floor and rubbing the crusts from the corners of his eyes. Luna smiled and poured him a second capful, staring into its tarry depths.

"Euphoria's hard to come by organically," she said, passing him the cap. "Get the right synapses firing through a potion or chemistry, and you can manufacture a feeling. Some people don't get the drop after, but you seem to be more sensitive than most." Harry snarled at the implication that he was anything close to sensitive. He may have feelings, but admitting to them was a step too far.

"Drugs have their place, just as potions do," Luna continued, largely ignoring Harry's various sounds. "I've found an orgasm with one's eyes open does the trick nicely, though, and those are mostly free."

"Mmph," Harry made an agreeing sound into his armpit, finding himself lying on the floor again. He forced another sip of tincture down his throat and finally felt the will to sit up straight, brushing dust from his skin.

"A good scream is just as good when you need it," she added sagely. Harry nodded as though this too made sense. Sometimes that was best with Luna—to just go along with the oddity for the time being. Her pearls of wisdom usually made sense in their own time.

"That should help with feeling so low, but only for a short while. You need to get up, out, and maybe see a Healer for something more long-lasting."

"Sure, yeah," Harry picked lint from the hair on his forearm, a useless gesture, and forced a little smile. "I'm sure this is just a side effect of whatever was knocking around in my system. I'll be fine now."

Luna looked poised to say something, a rare frown on her face. She sighed instead and capped the tincture bottle, dropping it into a knit bag clanking with what sounded like a dozen other glass vessels.

"How about some eggs?" she asked, standing and holding out her hand to help hoist Harry up off the floor.

"Eggs sound great," he acquiesced, giving in to being taken care of. "You can tell me all about—er—Paris?"

"Nice," she corrected. "Perfect. I take it you're not interested in the Gillyweed oil biscuits I brought, then?"

Harry's ears perked up at the mention of biscuits, but his stomach turned at the idea of sliding into a stoned dimension with Luna.

"Nah," Harry said with a little smile, following her down the kitchen's gloomy stairway, "I'm good, Luna. Thanks."

* * *

**Friday, August 8, 2003**

"Feeling better?" Victoria asked him, gaze sharp as a razor as he entered her office.

Harry collapsed into the low couch across from her desk, knowing that the answer didn't really matter to her one way or another.

"Sure," he said. He knew it was surlier than he ought to be with her.

"You've been ignoring my owls," she said. Harry shrugged, opened his hands palm-up to her.

"I've been having a hard time—" he paused. _Of it_ gave too much away, would cause worry. "—concentrating this week. Mind went a bit funny."

"You're sorted now, though, yes?" she asked. Harry nodded, running a hand through his hair. It wasn't as greasy as it had been—the bathroom mirror had given him hell until he'd given in to a shower and a shave.

"Right as rain," Harry said, only the faintest whiff of sarcasm in his tone. Fuck, but he didn't want to be here.

"Good," Victoria practically snapped at him. "There was nothing you could have done, obviously," she said, tone implying the opposite. Harry looked at her but let his sight go fuzzy, like when he tried to get the secret images to reveal themselves in Muggle psychiatrist's offices' waiting rooms. They never worked for him—the puzzles or the doctors—but a lack of focus allowed his mind to wander, kept his own feelings at bay. If he did it right, it was like he wasn't there at all.

"Let me get you up to speed, then—the Prophet is looking to be reimbursed," she continued.

"So reimburse them," Harry said tetchily.

"The money was made out as a donation, and the transfer can't be reversed. What's done is done, but now they're looking for a bit of reciprocity."

"So what, do I owe them my first-born, or..." Harry waved a lazy hand through the air. He wasn't in the mood to be dressed down, not for something that wasn't his fault.

"Ha. Inspired, incredibly funny." Victoria crossed the room and leaned against her desk. Harry wished she'd sit down, but knew better than to voice that opinion. "They expect information."

Harry snorted. "We can give them that. How about the first chapter of the book? They can do a preview or whatever."

Victoria scoffed. "Sorry, but nobody cares about your early childhood, darling. Year one had an extraordinary blip, and then not much happened till you were eleven."

Though he'd be the last to admit it, that stung. Victoria knew about Harry's childhood; that she so clearly didn't empathize was a bit of a kick in the teeth. The monster that lived way down deep at the bottom of the pit of Harry's fears perked up, sniffed the air. That she didn't care wasn't surprising—that no-one ever had or would care about him, not really—that was the pill he felt that he was continually finding new ways to swallow.

"Point taken," he said. Victoria gave a long sigh, tapped a nail against the desk. In a better mood, she'd apologize. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, "I know it's hard for you to understand, but I can't stress enough how important it is that this first book is a success. We need our friends in the media now more than ever." She fixed him with a steely stare. "We're in good luck that nothing about your little incident got out in the first place."

Harry focussed his eyes, and looked at her, really looked at her, wondered what kind of sociopathic childhood she'd had to turn out the way she had. The whites of her eyes were an angry pink, and empty vials of commercial Pepper-Up potion littered the desktop she gripped so tightly. Her matching cream-coloured linen suit was heavily lined, insinuating that she'd been up in it all night.

"Yeah, well, I got lucky. Ran into an old acquaintance at the club, and he got me home alright."

It wasn't a lie, per se, which made it roll off his tongue skillfully. Victoria held his eye.

"That's what half of my owls were about if you'd read even one of them. I've got an NDA for this knight in shining armour of yours to sign."

Harry bristled at the thought. It was always like this—non-disclosure agreements fluttering in on even his most casual interactions with people outside his inner circle. Harry shook his head vehemently.

"Not necessary. He's—I trust him."

"Harry—"

"I said, it's not going to be necessary," he said firmly. He didn't know why he was suddenly so sure that Malfoy wouldn't let the whole debacle slip, if only to his own friends, but his gut told him that he wouldn't. "Don't worry about it. I told Ron and Hermione the details—"

"I assumed," she responded with an eye roll Harry chose to ignore.

"—and they know mum's the word. They won't tell anybody anything. They never do—they never have." Harry took a deep, calming breath and sat back in his seat, worrying his lip. There was no use getting in a tiff—this was the same argument he had with Victoria every other month. "Hermione didn't even tell Luna anymore than the bare bones of what went on, and Luna's—"

"—as good as family, yes, yes, I know."

They sat in silence for a beat, nothing but the dull whirring sound of a cooling charm hard at work for distraction. It was true—Hermione hadn't mentioned Malfoy to Luna, even though Luna couldn't have cared less about anyone's sexuality, landing close to pansexual herself. Going through a war together had made the trio wary, taught them that information was power. The web of secrets they kept for and from one another was a thick and knotted thing.

"I'm sorry, Victoria," Harry said, at last. She gripped the edge of her desk so tightly that he feared her nails would leave marks in the wood. "I didn't mean to bail. Honestly."

"I know Harry, poor thing, are you really feeling better?" She didn't wait for him to respond. "It's only that the reception of this first biography will dictate the success of all those to follow—"

"What do you mean first," Harry asked, a nervous shiver rolling across his back. "There's going to be more? It's my whole life story, how could—"

"Don't worry yourself about that," she said, shaking a hand to quiet him. Her office was musty, smelling ever-so-faintly of something familiar that Harry couldn't put his finger on. It wasn't like her to be so obviously dishevelled—Harry worried that maybe he'd really fucked it all up this time. Perhaps the papers would well and truly turn on him; maybe the headlines would turn back to the kind he'd gotten used to during his teens. Wouldn't that be a riot—being held up as a pariah because of a personal grudge from Barnabus Cuffe over a few hundred ill-spent Galleons from the Prophet's slush fund?

"I understand that you were drugged, and it categorically was not your fault," Victoria interrupted his thoughts, eyes flicking over him, "but these things, there's an art to them. I've got your best interests at heart; you know that, right Harry? You're not disappearing on purpose?"

"Of course not." Harry sat up properly, jaw clenching as anger rose like bile in his throat. "I was _drugged by a stranger_."

"Yes, yes, of course, awful stuff, not your fault at all, no. I'll find a way to smooth things over with Barney, they won't be happy until they got a meaty front-pager out of us, but you leave that with me." She stared off into some middle distance, fingernails freeing the desk only to pick at her blazer's corner. "And the publisher, well, the release date has been pushed back now, and I don't know when I'm supposed to schedule you in for the re-writes, the biographer is absolutely refusing to leave Wales, mother's sick or some codswallop."

Harry started to say that he could travel to Wales, it wasn't like he had anything else to do during his suddenly open days, jobless and alone, but Victoria barrelled on.

"Henry was the photographer they sent—you remember Henry, mucky teeth, sweater-vests? I swear he's been talking; every owl I've received in the last two days from media has had incontinence issues." Harry sniffed the air, recognizing that part of the musty smell was that of owl droppings, like a whiff of the owlery at Hogwarts had drifted into the generally pristine office. He swallowed a laugh, blurred his vision again when her simpering look turned to a scowl.

"They're doing it on purpose," she said, tone beseeching Harry to feel for her. "These relationships are important to me." She sniffed, held a hand to her mouth as though on the verge of tears. "You can't possibly understand."

"I'm sorry," said Harry, over and over again, until he realized it was falling on deaf ears, and he left Victoria to her full-on breakdown.

* * *

**Wednesday, August 13, 2003**

On Harry's second visit to Victoria's office, she greeted him with a wet kiss for his cheek, giddy as he'd ever seen her.

"It's actually better this way; I can't believe this wasn't the schedule, to begin with," she said, pulling him into her office by his jacket sleeve. Freesias and roses overflowed from newly installed glass vases—Victoria was back in top, terrifying form.

"If everything goes according to plan, the book will hit shelves for Christmastime. Christmastime Harry, can you imagine?"

Harry made an incredulous face that he hoped shone with wonder rather than confusion about what Christmas and his life story had in common with one another.

"Your biography? At _Christmastime_?"

He widened his eyes for added effect. Victoria seemed to agree with this look. She beamed from ear to ear.

"We're going to have to up the quantities of the special editions; it's positively going to fly off the shelves. I've already got Flourish on the hook for a sizeable donation to secure you for a signing. Who shall it be made out to this time, hmm?" She tapped her nails together, eye twitching at his shrug. "Goblin sovereignty is really hot right now. You could do that, or your waifs, whichever."

Harry could practically see the Galleons swimming in her eyes as she spoke. He hummed approvingly in the appropriate places, zoning out, thinking unhelpfully of where he could find a cute someone to wink at and get handsy within a loo this time of day. He hadn't so much as touched another man since dancing up on Malfoy on his birthday, and that was weeks ago. Fantasies of pink-lipped somebodies on their knees, pressing feathery kisses to his cock—they'd overtaken his morning wank sessions. This same nymph-like twink was fast pressing in on his nighttime fantasies as well, and Harry knew he only had to find one such somebody to itch the scratch. He knew he looked half-decent when he tried, that he could pull someone—well, basically anyone, but that wasn't the point—if only he'd try.

He crossed his legs, nodding mock-thoughtfully at something Victoria was saying. Bollocks it all; he was getting desperate. He scolded himself for daydreaming of men decidedly not based on Draco Malfoy, no matter how many tow-headed lads had turned his head on street corners of late.

 _Concentrate,_ he willed himself. He'd never been any good at press relations, or any relations at that matter. He felt sick to his stomach at the thought of a month-long press campaign, but he was lucky to have Victoria needle him into doing it right, as she so often reminded him.

"You're lucky to have me," she told him. Harry took a deep breath, willing his hardening cock to wilt. Who was he to disagree?

"There will be weekly public _outings_ ," Victoria paused and gave Harry a pointed look. He managed a stiff smile at her shite pun, teeth gritting against an oncoming headache.

"Yes, so, the outings will begin in September and ramp up through the fall. I've sent a calendar to yours. Tom filled in all the key dates and start times."

"Start times?"

"Yes, start times," she said, her annoyance became clear. "Some of them have a morning start, and for a few, you'll need to work with Reza on outfit changes; I'm sorry, but yes, sometimes it's better if you stack a couple of events in a single day and don't give me that look. We'll do the tell-all interview in a few weeks."

"Who's the point on that one?" Harry scratched his thumbnail into his chair's arm, wondering how much all he'd actually have to put into his tell.

"Your friend Luna Lovegood." She arched a brow at him. "The Prophet will run it in the Sunday edition after the Quibbler publishes it officially."

Harry's questioning frown was met with her knowing smile. "They're carrying the magazine as an insert starting in the spring—the profit-sharing mess is being handled on their end." She preened a bit, smoothing flyaways from around her forehead down. "Don't go rushing to thank me or anything."

The feeling of foreboding settling throughout Harry's body lifted a little at the mention of Luna. He clung to this one piece of good news among the din of Victoria's demands.

"Are you listening, Harry? It's not just the coming out; you've got to tease the book's release date as well. Yes? You do understand that this is important, right?"

That Victoria spoke about these things as though they are of equal importance pushed his headache into migraine territory. Harry smiled graciously. It was probably his most useful skill, this.

"Of course, Victoria," he said. He zoned back out as she rattled off a dozen other topics to touch on during the interview. The mention of Hogwarts brought him out of his reverie.

"... the Hogwarts Halloween Ball as usual, of course, then there are the Ministry events leading up to the winter solstice. Christmas will be a bit of a flurry, no getting away this year for anybody, but then," she walked over to him and shook him by the shoulder, in what was probably meant to be a bracing gesture, "things will cool off. New year, new you, all that do. I won't book you a single thing in January. You can take a cruise to Alaska for all I care. Alright?"

"Of course, Victoria," Harry said. He patted her hand, hoping this was his dismissal and found her skin oddly papery to the touch. He often wondered how old she was. It was anyone's guess, with witches and wizards regularly living well into the one-or-two-hundreds. Ron pegged her at a young eighty, while Hermione thought her at least one-hundred but always obscured by all manner of glamours, potions, and other obfuscating magic.

"Steady, Harry. We'll do this together, you and me, yes?"

By the time he stood to leave, black spots had taken over large chunks of his vision. He tipped his head to her assistant Tom on his way out. The waiting room's cooling charms brought the ambient temperature down so low that the poor man wore a knit scarf and cardigan indoors. Tom was a Squib, and Victoria treated him like something of an idiot son—loved, but not doted upon.

"Alright, there, Harry?" Tom asked from behind a steaming mug of tea. He always perked up when Harry walked past—he'd never really moved past being star-struck about Harry coming by the office, even coming on three years. Harry smiled wider as the feeling of an icepick tapping from behind his eyeball worsened.

"Never better, Tom," Harry lied. He could swear as he turned away that Tom actually squealed as the front door was closing behind him.

Once home, Harry locked himself inside for days. He moved listlessly from room to room, subsisting on toast and tea with sloshes of whisky in cups for good measure. He half-arsed the forward for the updated version of _Hogwarts, A History,_ read a few Penguin classics tucked beneath a floorboard in Sirius' room, and generally brooded. The whisky helped with the anxiety the most, so he doubled up on that as the situation's reality started to sink in about how this interview would change his life. Set him free some, sure, but just as much would knock over a set of dominoes poised to fall, and he had no clear idea of what the collateral damage might be. Friends he might lose. Members of his chosen family who might not choose him back anymore.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley still didn't know.

George, Angelina.

Andromeda, and with her, Teddy.

On the fourth day, Kreacher entered his bedroom.

"What is that horrid smell being?" He gave the room a great sniff. "It is so good of the Master to leave so that Kreacher can wash the linens," he said.

Harry sat up and stared directly at the elf, not three feet away from him. Kreacher, unperturbed, promptly turned and left, speaking at an incredible volume about how he forgot his wash basket and would be back soon to cleanse the filth from his dear departed mistresses lodgings. Harry couldn't tell if he was actually so senile that he hadn't noticed him or if this was a ruse to get him out of the house. Either way, it worked.

That day, he made it out to collect curry from his favourite takeaway spot, nary a pap to be seen. His next few ventures saw him out for gradually more extended periods. Eventually, he polished up his broomstick and hopped astride it for a jaunt around London, hands still filthy with grease that spread to his white singlet and decrepit baby-blue jeans, and even if he was ultimately tailed and snapped midair, the photo gracing the cover of that week's _Savoire Fairy_ , he didn't much mind it.

"You should fly more often," Hermione told him as she passed the rolls his way at Weasley family Sunday dinner. "I haven't seen you so happy in ages, Harry," she added in an undertone. Harry gave her a little smile and stayed quiet through the rest of the night, secreting away into the garden to be nattered at by Teddy for an hour on how Quidditch worked and had he ever seen a Snitch in real life and did he know that on a broomstick you could go as high as the clouds, and Harry was sure he'd never be able to explain how much it made his heart hurt in a right way to be able to do this. To sit and have this child smudge his glasses with little hands; to have Arthur throw him an ale and ask his opinion of it, and then ignore it wholeheartedly and explain to him why he was wrong; to have Fleur poke him with a socked foot and bluntly tell him his hair _looks' orrible_ ; to just be, for a minute. He lay in the grass at the end of the night, staring up as the sky melted to midnight blue, fingers laced together across his chest as he drank it all in as though it were for the last time.

"You alright there, Harry?" Arthur asked as he passed him, wand pointed casually over his shoulder where the last plates and glasses hovered, ready for a wash.

Harry felt his throat constrict, his eyes prickling as feelings of fear and doubt encroached from the shadows. He nodded, unable to speak.

Arthur tipped his head, his kind face wrinkling with a smile as he ambled on to the warm yellow light beyond the kitchen door. Harry couldn't imagine losing this, the home where his heart had been ever since he became a part of the magic world. It felt unthinkable, yet, so easily possible.

As the long summer days grew shorter, he decided to drink in as much of regular life as possible, taking up all invitations that came his way. He forgot to drench the laptop in the Magic-B-Gone potion Tom sent along with it, and it promptly went up in sparks, convincing Kreacher that it, and all other Muggle technology, was cursed. With a good lacquer of the potion, the phone survived, a dark-grey clamshell with an M embossed on the front in blue, which Harry took great pains to hide from the house-elf's view. When he owled a few friends his newly minted cell-phone number, it was nothing short of shocking when Dean actually rang him up. They popped to the cinema to watch a long, rambling film about pirates that Dean considered beneath him, and Harry enjoyed more than he was willing to admit.

He joined Luna for a trip to Brighton on a beautifully clear day to pick strawberries and search for something called a spiked goose-apple. They didn't find any; Harry decided, privately, that the fruit had never existed in the first place, but wasn't about to be the one to tell Luna about that.

Photos of the two of them made the front page of both the Prophet's British and international versions, likely because they both opted to go shirtless for the last half of the picking. All Harry knew was that it had been a mistake not to cast protective charms against the sun—the ensuing burn wasn't worth the strawberries' sweetness. Composites of what their children would look like landed somewhere between hilarious and nightmare-fodder, so much so that Ron thought it very funny to send multiple clippings of the article to Harry.

The sketches of olive-skinned toddlers with cascades of blond hair and eerily bulbous blue-green eyes blinked out at Harry the next time he invited himself over to dinner. Harry incinerated the clippings he received but was stopped short of being able to do the same of Ron's prized copy by Ron's intervening _Aguamenti_ , cast so enthusiastically as to drench everything in a ten-foot sweep.

"Honestly!" Hermione stepped inside at the sound of their combined yelling, took one look at the rivulets of water falling from the ceiling and stormed out of the room, a vicious flick of his wand over her shoulder, slamming the door shut on Ron's, "—but he started it!"

"Why'd you have to go and set it on fire," Ron said, punching Harry harder than was strictly necessary.

"I'd probably find it funnier if my entire back wasn't peeling off in one large sheet," Harry grumbled, siphoning up the mess at his feet as Ron dried the countertops. A little shove turned into a hex, and the next they knew it, they were both on the floor, breathless, slightly bruised, but laughing. A simple _Tergeo_ had the room back in order in no time, and it wasn't long after that Hermione's grudging forgiveness was bought with Harry's spag bol and Ron whispering things that made her blush into her ear.

He booked out the back-room to the Leaky Cauldron for Ginny and Neville's return from their holidays, hosting most of Dumbledore's Army and the Weasley clan for a casual evening. It was an overcompensation, and he knew it—going above and beyond to radiate that his relationship with Ginny was healthy and normal and that he wasn't in the least jealous that she'd fallen in love within six months of their breakup, gotten engaged within another three.

"What's Kreacher been feeding you," she teased him, pinching a bit of skin on his side through his t-shirt.

"Too many mushy peas, to be honest, and I—"

"—love mushy peas, yes, I know."

Harry shrugged, sipped his snakebite. It was easier to blame Kreacher's cooking than to talk to Ginny about his lack of appetite. "I always lose a bit of weight in the summer. It'll be back come Christmas hols, don't worry."

"Wouldn't do to have you wasting away now, Harry," she said. Harry was glad to talk to her, glad that she always started the conversations he wasn't sure how to. "Now we're back, Sunday dinner's won't be half as painful. I'll play up my childlessness angle, you know—play with Victoire's hair, ask Teddy if he wished he had some more friends his age to play with."

Harry guffawed, shaking his head. He caught sight of Neville over Ginny's shoulder, deep in conversation with Parvati Patil near their section's entrance. Even before Neville knew he was gay, he'd never given Harry a second look when Ginny pulled him aside for a chat—he trusted him implicitly, as a friend.

 _Because Neville's a better person than I am_ , Harry reminded himself for the umpteenth time.

"Don't throw yourself under the bus on my part. I'll fix my singledom someday, don't you worry."

"I don't, with you," she said, bumping his shoulder and turning to look out at the assembled crowd. It was strange; Harry still got nostalgic whenever he caught a whiff of her smell, Clinique _Happy_ , that she'd worn since her teens. He inhaled deeply and let it go. Ginny had never been the one for him, but being around her helped, sometimes.

Hor d'oeuvres were served; George showed up late, but beaming, the Hogsmeade shop running he and Angelina off their feet of late; and Neville clapped Harry on the back with a hearty and well-meaning greeting and regaled him of the majesty of the magical flora of the Rockies as Ginny pretended boredom. It wasn't compelling—she clearly adored Neville, her face softening each time she glanced at him, love clear in her gentle ribbing of his obsession with the moss species they'd encountered.

There's was such an easy-going relationship that it seemed natural now that they'd be together forever. And it shouldn't have felt weird for Harry to see them so casually happy together, but it did, and he hated himself for having to paste a fake smile on. He didn't regret breaking up with Ginny; he regretted not knowing what a love like theirs was like, assumed he was doomed to watch the people around him succeed where he failed, and hated himself for wishing them anything but well. He overate the strawberry tart he brought for dessert and swallowed too much cider into the night until the smile came more naturally; he felt like absolute shit when they both come back up the next morning.

Clubbing was a bit ruined for him, nerves getting the better of him even when his drink remained firmly in his grasp all night. Even so, he did get pleasantly sloshed and managed a fumbled kiss with a stunning brunette in the bathroom of a Muggle pub in Shoreditch. The man passed Harry his number on a cocktail napkin, his name, "SIMON" in stout block letters. Harry kept it for a few days, fingering the edges until they were rubbed translucent, thinking about what could be. When the temptation to reach out began to overwhelm him, the clamshell phone open with the digits punched in as he finished another bland roast dinner alone at home, he grabbed his wand and incinerated the napkin without a second thought. He was sure that the house actually groaned when he did it.

"Shut it," he muttered, clearing his plate into the bin and washing up before Kreacher could catch him with the sponge in his hand. "It's never any good trying to date Muggles," he tried to explain to the walls. They didn't offer a response.

He never made that call. He was distant enough as it was—using a fake name with every person he'd ever hooked up with, barring Ginny. He wasn't fit for ordinary, healthy, happy people, and he knew it.

Harry wasn't up to fixing himself up. Not really. Not just yet.

And maybe, just maybe, he went poking around for details about what Draco Malfoy had been up to the last few years. And it was entirely possible that this searching was nosy and indicative of an unhealthy obsession, but Harry was prepared if anyone were to find out. His interest was perfectly above-board—he was just curious about a former schoolmate's goings-on, a bloke he ran into at a mixed wizard-Muggle club and would probably run into again. There were only so many of the places in London, right?

He may as well find out if Malfoy was worth being pleasant to, next he saw him. If he saw him.

Not that he _wanted_ to see him again, or anything.

The last he'd seen Malfoy in person had been during the trials that followed Hogwarts' battle. They were publicized. Harry was there. He'd spoken for Draco and for Narcissa. He hadn't bothered sparing a kind word for Lucius.

He tried not to remember those days too clearly, and with time and practice, the memories dulled. That whole period of his life became a bit of a hazy blur, and he was glad for it. To prepare the biographer of his book to get the details right, he took to pulling out memories and sharing them, and there were certain ones he wouldn't mind destroying, if only it were possible. A lot of the memories came from those days.

He could still pinpoint the last time he almost cried, the day of the final trial—that of the Death Eater who killed Colin Creevey. He was sure the last time he really, honestly cried was when Sirius died, and he didn't like to think about that either. About how maybe that was when he became someone beyond repair.

The Malfoys had been spared, the lot of them, a fact that still brought Harry's blood to a boil whenever he caught Narcissa's pinched face across a crowded ballroom, or, even more brazenly, Lucius' in the halls of the Ministry of Magic. But in all the intervening years, through all those run-ins, not once had he seen the youngest of the Malfoy clan, and it was this fact that now nagged at him.

He sent a note asking Tom to owl his contacts for any stories about the Malfoy fortune's heir. A thrill went through him when he found Tom's barn owl Gertie sitting waiting for him the next morning at his kitchen table. Gertie was a regal bird, the sort that made Harry's heart swell with bittersweet memories of Hedwig. She was patient as she held her leg aloft for Harry to untie a small envelope of clippings. He gave her head a pet before he sat, eagerly stuffing a piece of buttered toast into his mouth and grabbing the mug of tea Kreacher had laid out for him.

"Kreacher, ood ew chuh yowl a nut?"

The house-elf appeared with a _crack_ , a look of pure disdain painting his heavily lined features.

"Kreacher is not being the sort to _chuck_ an owl a _nut_. Kreacher is not swine, does not listen to such talk, unbefitting the Master of the great house of Black." He stopped to cough, spitting on the ground and snapping his fingers to vanish the phlegm away. "Kreacher may _fetch_ an owl a _treat_."

Harry was lucky that Kreacher accepted his massive eye-roll as answer enough—he had come prepared with owl nuts and tossed a few to Gertie before shuffling off, throwing Harry nasty looks over his shoulder all the way.

"You even had them on you, for heaven's sake," Harry muttered under his breath as he spread the clippings out on the table, eager to dig in. The sweetness of his eagerness soon turned to bitter disappointment as he scanned the articles. They could hardly be called that:

_The Children of the Sacred Twenty-Eight: Rocking Festive Robes All Holiday Season Long!_

_One Tip to Get Slim Quick: How to Nail Moonseed-Enhanced Fasting Just Like Draco Malfoy_

_Britain's Most Eligible Wizard, Veela & Giant Bachelors (Under 70)!_

It seemed that the year following the war, the youngest Malfoy was snapped at a few social events. The stories were a blend of conjecture and outright lies from papers of the quality of Witch Weekly and worse; words were included only to give context to photos of Malfoy, and other posh pure-bloods caught looking morose and brooding by daytime or exuberant and by all accounts very, very inebriated by nighttime. There, Malfoy in oversized sunglasses and beautiful blue robes in Rome, a mountain of shopping bags and boxes floating behind him; here, Malfoy practically falling out of a club's front door in Madrid, barely righting himself before he hit the pavement. Malfoy smack in the middle of London, smoking and wearing nothing but a pair of high-cut trousers, a plaid blazer, boots, and a frown. He looked increasingly malnourished as the months went on, but fashionably so. He painted his nails black, accompanied Pansy Parkinson to Cannes for the Muggle film festival, got caught driving an incredibly small, incredibly expensive car owned by the son of the American ambassador to Spain that he clearly hadn't learned to drive. Rarely smiling, often weaving where he stood.

And then there was a moment in the summer of 1999 when the photos stopped—radio silence. Harry turned the articles over to make sure he wasn't missing anything—he looked up to find that Gertie had left during his review, implying that she didn't have any further messages for him secreted away in her feathers. The papers weren't about to bring Harry the clue he was looking for.

The thing that annoyed Harry the most during the hot, hazy days that followed—days spent avoiding Kreacher like the plague, reading up on the odd collection of books tucked into the shelves of Sirius' room, and wanking—the thing that really got his wand in a twist was how very little information there was on Malfoy to dig through. It just didn't make sense that there was _nothing_.

Unless he was a good little boy all that time. Unless he did nothing of note. Unless he was telling the truth about turning a new leaf.

Harry sent a note via Floo back to Tom to ask if there was anything he could dig up from St Mungos or the Ministry. A hospitalization would do, or some minor infraction. Gertie returned with a sheepish note from the assistant that his contacts hadn't been able to come up with anything, but would Mr. Potter like him to begin with bribes, and if so, would one hundred Galleons suffice as a starting bid for information?

Harry hoped that his scrawled "Sorry for asking" was apology enough for putting Tom in this position. He hastily added, "No bribes, ever, please. Thanks, H". It was as Gertie was leaving the last time that green flames appeared in the grate of his kitchen fire. Through them, a familiar, if only somewhat friendly face appeared.

"Don't tell me you're thinking of wearing that? You do know that there will be pictures, right?"

Reza, Harry's stylist, stepped through the flames and instantly conjured an iron rolling rack, as was his custom. He un-shrunk a handful of clothes affixed to hangers to add to the stand, shirts and trousers and robes in colours and fabrics that Harry hadn't the courage to choose for himself. He spotted velvet and suppressed a shudder.

Reza turned his wand to his own robes, using its tip to vacuum dust from his hems.

Harry's face scrunched up involuntarily.

"I'm not wearing this outside the house, but, uh, I am leaving the house today," he winced his way through this sentence, piecing together why Reza was in his kitchen in the first place. Reza looked at him, decidedly unimpressed.

"Because today is my interview. Isn't it?"

"You forgot. Didn't Victoria send over a calendar?"

Harry didn't mean to glance over at the pile of unopened mail at the other end of the table. It had grown to something of a heap, though the calendar, rolled into a scroll a metre long, was painfully evident at the top of the pile. It didn't take much for Reza to follow Harry's eye line and spot it too.

"Could you not open it at the very least, sweet Merlin? You're not hiding it or anything," Reza said, huffing.

"You're nothing if not observant, Reza," Harry said, "And me, you know I'm hopeless without your help."

The darker man preened for a moment before dropping the smile, glowering at Harry once more.

"Don't you go trying to shine those eyes at me now, Potter." He wagged a finger at Harry. "I'm wise to your ways!"

He aimed his wand at the calendar, which unfurled itself at high speed, slapping onto the wall near the table's head.

"How you remember to get up each morning is a fucking miracle. A miracle!" Harry ignored his continued comments as his attention was drawn to the mottled look of the calendar. So many days in the coming weeks had little notes in every colour affixed to them, lime green and lavender and rosy pink, and Harry was half-sick to realize that they all represented an event, a meet-and-greet, a signing, an interview, and they all started right now.

"Now come on, you've got to be there in an hour. When was the last time you showered?" Reza took Harry's chin in his grip and turned his face left and right, tutting. "Up with you, you need a proper shave and not that halfway-I-sort-of-shaved thing you do with that Muggle razor; I can always tell when you do that. Victoria will have my fucking neck. You know everyone prefers you with those sweet baby cheeks." He slapped one gently, his eyes alight with the fun of it. Harry rolled his eyes, started for the staircase.

"Shower, a real shave, got it. Kreacher can do you up breakfast if you want, just ask—I'll be down in a jiff," Harry said. As he left the room, he spied Reza spreading out options of glasses frames in whatever tortoiseshell was in the same spot that days ago held photo after photo of a young Draco Malfoy, impeccably dressed. Harry had stowed the pictures in his bedside table, taking them out a night to flick through them.

In case they held a clue he'd missed, of course. Of course.

The glasses seemed to be basically brown and black to Harry. His stomach unclenched slightly as he took the stairs two at a time. He may not have any idea what was going on in his life most of the time, but he did have people around him that did, and who did right by him—most of the time.

Even if he felt like a lamb going to slaughter, at least he'd look damn good doing it.

* * *

**Friday, August 29, 2003 - Morning**

The interview went strangely well. Harry didn't sweat through his shirt or throw up on Luna from nerves—his top two fears—though he did trip over his own shoes upon entering the room, a detail he hoped wouldn't make it into print.

That the interviewer was Luna was a stroke of good planning in Harry's favour. That she had set up as the interview as a casual conversation had over thousand-flavour ice-creams while on a walk of her property was a pleasant surprise. Harry tried his best to be candid, if not too revealing. He loved Luna, but she had an uncanny way of saying things that at first blush sounded silly, but on review often elicited more than just foolish answers. Answers that revealed more than the subject meant to.

She was both a friend and a respected young journalist, and Harry hoped she erred on the side of friendship with her treatment of his interview material.

A week later, he was desperate to hop on a broom, get out of town, and do something. Ron and Hermione couldn't be fallen back upon—they were both busy with work, putting in gruelling hours that left little time for Harry's neuroses. His morning exercises turned into thrice-daily routines to calm his nerves; everything ached. He needed out, somehow, though he wasn't sure how or when in his foreseeable future.

Because the day had finally come. He slept fretfully and awakened early on Friday morning as bundles of papers with his face blinking out from the cover The Quibbler made their way out to the households, shops and businesses of magical Britain. By Sunday, not a witch, wizard or Being in the world would be unaware of the story when it would be reproduced in the Prophet.

The post had already arrived by the time Harry made it down to the kitchen for breakfast.

"For the Master," Kreacher said, pushing a plate in his direction as he took up the magazine, unfurling it from the bit of twine it came in.

" _Good luck finds those that need it, especially in Italy_ ," read an unsigned note that Harry recognized as Luna's writing as it tumbled to the floor from the magazine's folds.

"Bacon sarnie," Kreacher implored, pushing the plate closer to Harry's elbow, frowning as Harry sat with the magazine spread between his hands. "The Master's favourite."

"Not hungry this morning, I'm afraid," Harry mumbled, almost too busy drinking in his own face and drowning in stage fright to notice when Kreacher's face turned briefly to a look of worry. He caught the look and had the decency to add, "Sorry you went through the trouble," as the elf huffed and walked away, leaving Harry alone with himself.

His own face smiled sheepishly out from the cover before looking down and away, then back again on a loop. There was no headline to distract from the photo. Stranger still, there were no words at all on the cover, not even The Quibbler's usual title or price, because since when had Luna ever made logical sense while running her family's magazine. Nothing to distract from Harry, the subject of its main story. He'd have to open the issue to find out what the headline was, which was far too much to handle right then. He tossed the magazine aside and opted instead to read The Prophet from cover-to-cover, if only for want of something to do.

Hermione's bill about Goblin's rights looked poised to pass in court that day. Seeing her surname in print brought a grin to Harry's face. These were the victories that Hermione lived for, and he was genuinely happy for her.

He made a mental note to buy her something nice to commemorate the moment, maybe drop in with it, and owl Ron to do the same.

His horoscope was alarming in its mediocrity, yet hit the nail on the head—" _Leo: Don't forget to stretch._ " Dawdling for nearly an hour, he completed the _Puzzles_ section, laughed through the inane articles of _Pink Magic_ and almost died of boredom making his way through _Politics_. But that was when he saw it, the diamond in the muck. He sat up from his relaxed pose, laying flat against the long bench that had once held half the Order over busy supper times. He absentmindedly brushed crumbs from his t-shirt as he re-read the words—the bacon sarnie had been eaten after all.

A small piece, not even an inch square. Filler, really, tucked alongside the articles continued from pages in earlier parts of the paper.

" _Notice of Public Hearing._

_May it be known that Draco Lucius Malfoy shall have his case heard within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on this date._

_This hearing is open to the public._

_Reference: Hearing 882308-J. Date: Friday, August 29. Time: to be determined. Room: yet to be confirmed at the time of printing._ "

Harry read and re-read the words. There was the name he was searching for, today's date and the time left vague, though they'd be forced to wrap up and break by end-of-day—Ministry employees wouldn't go into overtime on a Friday afternoon, not for some little hearing. It was nothing less than a gift from some higher power—a sign.

"Thank you," he whispered up at the cracked plaster ceiling. The shutters to the cabinets rustled appreciatively. Harry didn't bother correcting the house about who he was thanking.

Within minutes he located and pulled on a mostly clean t-shirt and summer-weight robes, whispered a cleaning charm at his new glasses, and tried to remember and failed the incantation to hook a watch to one's wrist. Before he could overthink it, he wet his hair and dragged a brush through it, forcing the swells of wild curls to choose a direction. Might as well try, he figured, if he was going to brave the Ministry. Reza'd cut and styled his hair so artfully for the Quibbler's photoshoot that he'd stood back, hands clasped under his chin and had marvelled at his own creation.

"You look just like my first Spanish boyfriend," he said, eyes glossy.

"I thought Tomas was an arsehole?" Harry asked.

Reza shook his head, the look of wonder never leaving his face. "He was. But he was a _gorgeous_ arsehole."

Harry tousled it just a bit with his hand, not recognizing himself when it was too tame. It still looked kind of glossy, healthy, and he hoped that by the time he squeezed his eyes shut to Apparate that he looked some sort of presentable.

With the distinct feeling of being squeezed from a tube, he landed in the waiting room he pictured. The dark, polished wood and threadbare maroon carpet were only slightly familiar, but the ink-thinner's strong smell told him he was in the right place. The unmistakable smell of Hermione's hair after a long day at the office, an office Harry was derelict in visiting lately. He relied on a foggy memory as he pushed open the door to his left, poking his head in the crack and knocking at the doorjamb.

"Can it wait?"

Harry opened the door further and waited for Hermione to look up, leaning against the frame.

"Oh, it can wait all day if you like."

The pinched look of concentration melted away from Hermione's face as she looked up and recognized him.

"Harry!" She beamed at him, quill poised midair. "Looking lovely, might I add."

Harry brought his hand beneath his chin, fluttering his eyelashes to the sky. "Who, me?"

She laughed, placing the quill in its stand. "What brings you this way?" She sat back into her enormous green-leather rolling chair. Ron called it her throne; Harry was apt to agree.

"Maybe I read that a certain law regarding Goblins was poised to pass today," he said, "and I thought that today was as good a day as any to visit one of my best friends and treat her to lunch."

"Look at you, reading the papers again," she said, lips twitching with a smirk. "Well, I did bring a lentil soup, but, to be honest, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. Ron's turn on the dinner rota." They shared a wince at the mention of Ron's cooking. "Give me a second to finish this."

She scratched the last of a note, tapping it with her wand to set it to fold up into the form of a tiny airplane and zoom through the open doorway. Harry noticed that her jacket and purse were some of her best—a deep ruby red double-breasted silk jacket and the vintage Coach purse her mother had gifted for her last birthday. She was clearly ready for a photoshoot of her own, depending on how the vote went that afternoon. She paused to scrutinize Harry's face as she flipped her hair over the jacket's collar, a look that didn't bode well for Harry. She had ink smudged into her hairline, but he knew better than to try to distract her with that. Too obvious.

"You know, you think you've become a good liar, but I can still read you like an open book after all these years." She took a compact from her pocket and checked her lipstick and teeth, eyeing Harry over the mirror's edge.

"Oh?" Harry said. The skin on the back of his neck prickled; he hadn't even been thinking about Malfoy, yet Hermione was uncanny. If anyone could see straight through him, it would be her.

"You're nervous," she said, tucking the mirror away and closing the distance between them to pull him in for a hug that he sank awkwardly into, hands pausing inches from her back. "And on top of that, you're a terrible liar, Harry James Potter. Your interview came out this morning." She pulled back to look him in the eye. "Have you read it yet?"

"Not yet," Harry said, exhaling. Hermione was quick to mask her exasperation with her This Smile Is Meant To Bolster Your Confidence look. Harry recognized it as the face she made when she tried to soften the truth for him.

"It's really something," she spoke slowly, tiptoeing. "I'm a little surprised that you were as candid as you were. Luna does find a way to get to the root of things, doesn't she? The photos are striking, it's—"

"Don't; please don't." Harry rushed to shush her, pushing her out the door. "I've been in a twist all morning thinking about it, and I'm starved." He rubbed a hand on her shoulder, feeling infinitely better in her presence than he had all day. "This is about celebrating you. I'm taking you anywhere you want, wizard or Muggle."

"Thanks, Harry," she said, charming her hair into an elegant bun, a few tendrils left floating at her temples.

"If it happens to have the added benefit of calming your absolutely not frayed nerves—"

"—All the better," Harry said, his smile genuine. "So, where to?"

"There's this place I've meant to try. It's only a couple of blocks away. We could walk it. It's a bit of a hole in the wall, but I hear they make everything scratch, and nobody from here bothers with it—it's Muggle."

"Glamours?" Harry asked. Hermione's little curls shook as she shook her head.

"It's a touch early for lunch. If we sneak out the back way, we could walk there unmolested, I bet." She pulled Harry in from the centre of the hallway as a co-worker passed them, giving them a tight smile and nod of the head as they passed that clearly communicated _Keep walking_ without saying it aloud. Harry always felt best in public when he was with Hermione—she was good at protecting him without smothering him.

"Works for me. Lead the way; I never got the hang of this floor."

She started walking to the left, their footfalls muffled on the ancient Berber carpet of the hallway. "I'm actually glad you're here; I've been dying to find someone to talk to about what's going on in this office." She lowered her voice as they passed door after door, each one closed, with only a blurred glass window giving a peek into the offices beyond them. Harry barely understood what Hermione did, much less which sub-department of a sub-department she worked for, but he was sure that this smoke and mirrors treatment of her title was on purpose. His best guess was that her role was a cover for work with the Department of Mysteries, but it wouldn't do for him to know that, would it?

"I wouldn't quite call it _gossip; you_ know I hate office gossip, but, well—" she hooked their arms together, "I'm just happy to see you."

"You too, Mione," Harry said, following his friend's lead, eager to hear her stories and not think, not for one moment, about the story that was currently breaking across wizarding Britain.

* * *

The conversation was so good and frankly, the early afternoon glasses of wine so free-flowing that by the time Harry pecked Hermione's cheek goodbye, he'd quite nearly forgot what his other, perfectly reasonable reason for visiting the Ministry had been. The wine made him sloppy, so he failed to apply a glamour as they re-entered the building during the lunch rush's tail-end, suddenly face-to-face with a crush of workers queuing for the Floos in the Atrium or arriving back from their breaks. By luck alone, he made it to the hushed sanctity of Hermione's office back into the lift before being assaulted by the incandescent blast of a flashbulb.

"Good day, Mr. Potter, good day to you," the voice of an impossibly small man squeaked up to Harry by way of greeting. The photographer was holding a camera the size of a beachball up to his eye, and Harry couldn't begin to make out his features, his own vision a sea of stars from the light.

"Could you please not, not with the flash?" Harry tried for an appealing smile, his cheeks already starting to blaze. People thought of him as ruddy, though it was just that he blushed, even after all these years, when first confronted with a camera.

"Brave thing, brave thing you did, in the papers," the man said. Harry swallowed nervously—he would be having versions of this conversation for months to come.

"Er, thanks," he said. "Which paper are you from?

"Me? I'm freelance." The lift stopped to let on newcomers, though the assembled group simply gawked at him and the photographer until the grille closed, not a person joining them. Harry closed his eyes as the lift started up again, cursing each and every stupid, staring face that hadn't saved him from the presently awkward situation he was in. Photos with fans would be better than this. Though he thought, gulping, maybe they weren't fans anymore.

"Don't mind me saying you've got the support of any forward-thinking folk on your side. Does your interview have anything with what's brought you to the Ministry today?"

The man was resetting for a second shot, and Harry remembered himself this time, lowering his chin, facing the camera with his most practiced smile. This time the camera clicked and a thick cloud of smoke rolled out from its bottom, hiding the man entirely from sight. Harry continued his internal litany of curses, cursing the Ministry lifts, every single fucking one of them, for somehow rolling along at breakneck speeds and yet also, when it really counted, being so abysmally slow.

The box shuddered to a jolt as the calm female voice announced his destination.

" _Level two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wizengamot Administration Services._ "

"Not today, just visiting an old friend. I've got to be going, but, um, thank you for your support," Harry finished in a flurry, slapping all the buttons in the lift behind his back before gingerly stepping out and slamming the grates together.

"Just one more—" the man tried to interject before the grille clanked shut and whisked him away.

Fuck. Fuck it all. They knew he was here now, and like blood in the water, his presence would bring more.

"Harry!"

Harry winced instinctively at the call of his name before looking up to face some new barrage. Only this time, it didn't come, and his fake smile was replaced by an easier, wider one.

"Dean! What are you doing here?"

Dean Thomas approached him from across the hall, shrinking down the camera in his hands to slip into his blazer pocket. He wore a visitors badge in blue, the colour reserved for visitors on work permits. "Working on spec. Guess who I got assigned to cover?"

Harry shrugged, though his heart had started beating heavy in his chest. "Beats me."

"Malfoy. Draco that is—did you hear about this?"

Harry seemed to pull off a believable look of surprise because Dean continued on, lowering his voice conspiratorially as he led Harry over to an alcove containing dustbins. The two of them instinctively turned away from the hallway to avoid being recognized for as long as possible.

"Dead boring to be honest, can't hardly tell what's he has been dragged in for. Not that I wouldn't normally be all for raking a Malfoy over the coals or anything—I've still got the scars from my short stay at the Manor—but it's brutal."

"What's he in for?" Harry asked. Dean shrugged, scratching at his chin with a thumbnail. His beard was coming in, and his shirtsleeves were wrinkled at the wrists—he'd clearly been working all day, if not through the night before on the story. Harry's interest spiked, though the drink sloshing about in his brain slowed his capacity to put two-and-two together.

"Basically, a violation of terms. They were this close to hiring him—"

"What?" Harry said, low, as Dean nodded.

"I'm dead serious. It looks like it would have happened too if he hadn't asked for special treatment."

"What kind of treatment?"

Dean huffed, checking over his shoulder before leaning closer. "It's a strange one. Some kind of request for uniform modification. Which I'm trying to work out why—he's not stupid, he wouldn't ask to be able to cover his Mark, and I can't figure out what else he'd be after." Dean rolled his bottom lip into his mouth, worrying it. "Not that I give a shit what happens to him, but they're light on details and heavy on rhetoric on this one."

Harry folded his arms and leaned against the wall, tucking his face away as a group passed them by on their way to the canteen, empty mugs clutched in their hands.

"Sounds a bit like the old days," Harry said, and Dean nodded, his dark eyes bright and sharp. He'd been a journo long enough to cut through personal feelings to get at "capital T" truth, no matter the story. Harry trusted his opinion more than most.

"You've got that right. They've been at him for hours. Makes some of the old guard feel good, I think, pulling in Death Eaters—"

"Former," Harry blurted. Dean gave him a funny look.

"Yeah, sure—former. They still pull in former Death Eaters every so often to give 'em a good raking over the coals." He sighed and cracked his neck, rubbing a spot on one side. "They're wrapping up for the day now. I figure I'll be back for round two sometime soon, which I'm not looking forwards to, mind. I've never heard old Dodge go on like that before." He tapped Harry on the shoulder, the seriousness leaving his face. "Never mind all that though, what brings you here?"

"Just visiting Hermione for lunch," Harry said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, "Got caught by a pap in the lift and tried to lose him. I should probably move along before we're mobbed."

Dean nodded and slapped Harry's shoulder in what was meant to be an encouraging way, knocking him slightly off-balance. Harry wondered if he had a look about him that radiated a need for a shoulder-slap to bolster his confidence.

"Tell you what. I've got a friend at the front desk in control of the lifts who owes me one. I could ask her to keep the rest of the horde back up in the Atrium. I'm sure you could get out the back or summat, yeah? Didn't they give you like, keys to the place?"

"To the city, but yeah," Harry waffled, wondering when he became the kind of person who cared about the semantics of these things, "I know my way around well enough to get out."

"Alright," he said, "best get on that right quick. Fancy a pick-up game sometime soon? The boys would love to have you on as Seeker."

Harry smiled, nodded yes, even though he knew deep down that it would be months till he could make it. "Sounds brill. First round's on me next pub night at the Leaky."

"I'm keeping you to that," Dean said, backing into the next lift alongside a throng of witches speaking at volume in what sounded like Greek, leaving Harry once again curiously alone in a Ministry hallway.

He turned, multiple hallways availing themselves to him, but no clear idea of where Malfoy's hearing was taking place. He cursed himself for not asking Dean when he'd had the chance. He'd only been gone a few months, but the Ministry had a habit of crowding all its renovations during the summer months when most office-workers were on holiday, and Harry could feel the buzzing magic of wizarding space all around him, additions thrown on haphazardly to account for growth. Surely he should go left, down the stairs, past the DMLE offices and then down a floor. Or was it right?

Just as Harry decided to go with his gut, which always seemed to pick left, did a harangued looking witch exit from that direction. Before she had a chance to catch a look at his face, he jerked to the right, rapidly descending one staircase after another, taking the treads two at a time until the sound of more voices coming up at him slowed his speed.

He rounded the corner and nearly smashed face directly into the chest of Gawain Robards, head of the Auror Department.

"Oh-ho there, Harry." Robards took a step back and gave him a quick up and down. "What's got you in such a rush?"

Harry motioned vaguely up the staircase, automatically standing at attention, fingers finding his trousers' seams, his chin rising ever so slightly.

"Paps caught on that I was in the building, sir."

Robards nodded knowingly, muttering, "Stand down, Harry, you're not on duty at the moment, or I'd be a considerably happier man."

Harry relaxed a mite, brushing a stray flop of hair from his face. "Sorry about that, sir. I just—"

"Doesn't matter," Robards waved his executive assistant Barbara on, "Don't wait on my account, Babs." She gave Harry a sympathetic smile and turned from them with a demure, "Harry," and a smile in her kind blue eyes. Harry liked Barbara—she always delivered bad news first and purposefully lied to him about meeting start-times to curb his habit of running in late, flustered and in a bad temper with his superiors. Harry liked to think it was because his Christmas cards and French chocolates kept her satiated, but he knew she had something of an intergenerational pash for him. She was old enough to be his mother twice over, but that never stopped her from letting her gaze linger as she closed the door behind him.

"Bastards," Robards continued, "the lot of them. I've half a mind to ban them from headquarters, but—well, you know. The right of the public to know what's happening within these walls and all." Harry nodded, careful to keep his face slack. He and Robards didn't agree on a lot of things; though Harry often detested the British wizarding journalistic outfit as a whole, he never went so far as to think that they didn't provide an essential service.

"What can you do, sir," Harry said. Robards finally turned his attention fully on to Harry, eyes narrowing.

"Well, you won't be finding your way out down this way unless you're planning on using an emergency exit," he said, mouth twisting as he studied Harry, "but you already knew that."

Harry itched under his gaze. The man might be fooled by Harry's first lie, but he was too on the nose to be fooled by more, so Harry stayed silent instead. They were being passed by with glancing looks from about a dozen witches and wizards, most of whom Harry recognized as the proxies of Ministry higher-ups. Their faster than usual gaits and exhausted faces did the explaining for them that they, rather than those they represented, did most of the Ministry's real work.

Harry feigned dumb, a tactic that always boded well for him around political types. Well, if he was honest, with just about everyone.

"I don't mean to keep you, sir, but what's all this about? Was there some vote today, or..." Harry looked from face to passing face, careful not to gaze too long into Robards's eyes. Most of the Auror force had some Legilimency training, and they weren't afraid of using it internally if only to get the gist of each other's moods.

Robards shifted, leaning close to Harry. The smell of his aftershave was overwhelming, like boulders smashing into a forest of pine.

"Between you and me? A show of force where one isn't needed."

"Is that so, sir?" Harry said.

Robards sniffed, scrubbed a hand over his face. He was clearly tired—Dean hadn't been kidding when he'd said they'd been at it all day, then. "Leftover bad blood from the war and a waste of time and Galleons. I won't be attending the sentencing, that's for certain." He looked somewhere over behind Harry and nodded.

"Good to see you, as always, but I must be off." He patted Harry on the shoulder and hesitated, brow furrowed with the many lines a life of taking frowning seriously had earned him. A writhing ball of snakes started up in Harry's stomach—he didn't want his superior officer getting candid with him about his sexuality, not now, honestly, not ever.

"All's well with your article today. You continue to have the Auror department's full support—I want to make that clear."

"Thank you, sir," Harry breathed, looking to his shoes. Robards withdrew his hand, shoving them into the pockets of his trousers. "I'm looking forwards to your presence at the Winter Ball and to having you back in our ranks," he said with a nod, and before Harry could wiggle out of that, he was striding up and away.

Harry hardly let a breath out as he watched him walk away, the word _sentencing_ echoing in his brain, looming like a dark cloud in his mind.

"Fuck," he whispered under his breath as he turned around, and suddenly, there he was.

Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy, looking every bit the scared boy Harry once walked in on in upon a bathroom. Eyes glassy, his skin colourless against the uniform black of his formal robes. He startled and stopped walking as he recognized Harry. They were suddenly alone in the sweeping corridor, the voices of those who had conducted the hearing disappearing into the distance.

"You," Malfoy rasped out the word. He turned away and let out a shuddering breath, one arm wrapped tightly across his waist and the other hiding his face. Harry swallowed, not sure what to say.

"Malfoy, I—"

"Stop." Malfoy spit the word the way a parent admonished a naughty child. "Stop it."

It worked. Harry wasn't sure when the last time was, he felt so ashamed. Not for the first time during a tense conversation, he wished for his invisibility cloak to simply disappear.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this. This was an intrusion on a scene that wasn't his to see. It was a dirty trick, his being there, and Malfoy knew it.

"Malfoy, I'm—" Harry started again, but when he looked up, the words died in his mouth as he realized that Malfoy was crying. One gloved hand swiped angrily across his cheeks each time a fresh tear fell.

"Are you b-back?" he stammered. Harry's hand twitched at his side. He so badly wanted to reach out to stop him from pushing the tears away so forcefully—the white of his cheeks was fast becoming red raw from the assault, eyes bloodshot to match. Malfoy was too pale to cry beautifully; his was anguish writ large, blotchy and pitiful.

"Me?" Harry asked. Malfoy choked on a laugh, huffing between sobs. He didn't bother hiding his crying, couldn't even if he tried.

"Yes. Are you," he paused to suck in a ragged breath, "coming to get me? How come," again the ugly rattle, the exhale shaky, "they assigned the great Auror Potter to me?"

"I don't work here anymore," Harry said. He took a step towards Malfoy, unsure to what end, but Malfoy stepped back as well, skittish.

"You'll hurt yourself doing that," Harry said absently, touching his own face. Malfoy's wiping away of the tear tracks was a battle he was quickly losing as they continued to spill into the hollows of his cheeks.

His chin was wet.

"Why is it," Malfoy said, low and dangerous, "that it's always you around?"

Harry opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It felt as though a goose egg felt was lodged in his throat. He couldn't speak around it.

"Why are you—always around—when my life goes to shit?" Malfoy covered his face with both hands, drawing in long, stuttering breaths. " _Fuck_. Would you please—just go—away?"

Harry looked around, not sure what to do. Leaving was always an option, but he didn't want to leave Malfoy like this. It would be cruel to leave him to ugly-cry in the Ministry of Magic, when he owed him—what, exactly, he wasn't sure, but he knew he had to at least protect him from those who would do him more harm.

His skin itched; the late-summer heat on his walk back from lunch had made him sweat, and the wool of his cloak prickled at the back of his neck. He pulled his robes over his head and gathered them in his hands, frowning at the fabric until it bent to his will, transfiguring into a plain handkerchief. He folded it into a square held it out towards Malfoy.

"Here," he said, to draw Malfoy's attention to his offering. A white flag, whether of peace or defeat, he wasn't sure.

Malfoy looked from it to him, puzzled and sour, and snatched it to push it into his eyes.

"Malfoy, whatever just happened—it can't be as bad as all this," Harry said. Crying made him uncomfortable, and people tended to do it a lot around him. Malfoy gave a broken laugh, huffing as though he'd run a mile.

"What part of fuck off—don't you understand—Potter?" He folded the kerchief with trembling hands and spat the words at Harry, wheezing with the effort. It struck Harry as weird that he wasn't really sobbing. This wasn't grief, just tears never-ending, like when the cap was cranked off a fire hydrant. If it weren't for the physical outpouring of tears, he'd simply seem angry.

"You're shaking," Harry said.

"Ten points—to Gryffindor," Malfoy retorted. His red eyes ignored Harry completely, trained instead on the staircase over his shoulder.

Harry bit his lip, walking to the far side of the hallway and looking down the corridor—not a soul in sight. He crossed back over to peek upstairs, and then back to Malfoy, trembling quite obviously. Harry was pretty sure he needed to see a Healer for whatever oncoming breakdown he was having.

"Listen, I know this is obvious, but—are you alright?" Harry asked.

At this, Malfoy did the weirdest thing. He laughed—giggled, really, a reedy, high pitched thing—right through the tears. Each breath in was an awful wheeze and—

When the thought slammed into Harry's mind, it clicked. Harry knew where he'd seen this before. He'd pushed this feeling down, gulped around it for a single breath, screamed into empty rooms from it. He'd spent hours stubbornly ignoring the signs, attempting housework until the breakdown was all-consuming.

He snapped his fingers. "You're having a panic attack," he said, the thought popping out of his mouth.

Malfoy stopped laughing, looked Harry dead in the eye and said, "I'm about to—so if you'll—excuse me," and pushed past him to climb the stairs. Harry watched, the picture of him ludicrous—leaning heavily into the wall on his right with his palm pressed to it, his entire body shaking like a leaf.

"Malfoy," Harry called up to him.

"Fuck _off_." His yell echoed off the stone, but he didn't slow his journey up the stairs.

Harry knew what he should do was walk away. He shouldn't get any more involved with Malfoy than he already had—for him to react like this meant that the hearing had gone poorly, and who knew what snooty, asinine reason he'd given the Ministry of Magic to drag him in for one in the first place.

So what, he was crying? Harry watched him stumble on a step and swore under his breath. Malfoy was a sore loser, and a shit, and wanted nothing more than for Harry to leave. Harry should wish him well and walk the other way—he could make it back up to the Atrium through the press exit in the courtroom and leave Malfoy behind to fend for himself.

He looked up at Malfoy inching his way up the stairs, nearly out of sight around the sloping corner of the staircase and thought about how easy it would be to walk away, but the knot in his stomach wouldn't let him. Not when he needed to fix this. This mess that happened when he went and stuck his nose in where it didn't belong.

"Jesus Christ, what am I doing," he muttered before jogging up the steps.

"Malfoy, stop for a minute," he said.

"Piss off," Malfoy hissed over his shoulder, dragging himself up to another tread. Harry grabbed his wrist without thinking. Malfoy wrenched away as though burned and followed up with a shove, hard, to Harry's chest. It caught him in the solar plexus, a painful spike of nausea rippling through his torso. He stumbled backwards, crouching low to maintain his centre of gravity and resist toppling down the unforgiving stone steps. Malfoy may have been gaunt, but he wasn't without an angry strength.

"Don't you _fucking touch me_ ," Malfoy said, close to pleading now. "Just leave—me—alone, Potter."

"You can't go up there," Harry said, his eyes watering.

Malfoy growled and stomped up another step, then another. His cheeks were flushed as though with rosacea, broken blood vessels from where he wouldn't stop rubbing them.

"The paparazzi are here, you prick. They followed me," Harry yelled at him.

That stopped Malfoy dead in his tracks.

"They'll get you if you try to go out through the Atrium," Harry said, quieter this time.

Malfoy turned his back to the wall to rest his shoulders on it. Harry approached carefully, watching as his head settled back in repose. He was shaking much worse now, and wet streaks traced lines down his throat. The kerchief, forgotten, fluttered to the floor.

"For what it's worth," Harry said to the ground, twisting his hands, "I'm sorry."

"I really," Malfoy whispered, gulping air around the words, "really hate you, Potter,"

"No, you don't," Harry said. The answer came to him so quickly it surprised him. Surprised Malfoy, too, by the look of it. He stared at Harry, hyperventilating, but didn't retort. Harry closed the distance between the two of them. "Or maybe you do, it doesn't matter. Just—I can get you out of here. I'm good for that, at least."

Harry waited for the arched-brow thing that Malfoy was so good at, the sneer, the jibe. None of them came—only Malfoy's shallow, desperate breaths.

"I can Side-Along you home. I'm only supposed to in an emergency, but—" he fluttered his hands nervously. He'd ask for forgiveness later, and he'd get it. He hadn't fucked up in a while, and Kingsley owed him a favour or six. "Will your wards let me in if we're together?"

Seconds passed, time stretching out. Harry waited for some kind of assent and was elated when it came in the form of an almost imperceptible nod from Malfoy.

"Okay," Harry said. There was to be no waiting. He slid his left hand into Malfoy's robes' open wrist and along the length of one of his long gloves. He continued until he was gripping at the bony knobs of Malfoy's elbow. That the gloves had made it from the nightclub to the courtroom struck Harry as odd. He'd assumed them to be affected, a fashion statement, and yet here they were again—a concrete barrier between Malfoy and the world.

Malfoy's hand found the crook of Harry's arm. He squeezed, his grip tight. Harry looked to him as he pursed his lips to try to breathe out in a steady stream. He sounded awful; Harry wished he'd had better training for what to do during scenarios like these during his time with the Auror's, something more substantial than the anecdotal, off-the-cuff solutions he'd figured out during the war, rubbing Hermione's shoulders as she shook with uncontrollable tears.

Harry leaned in, steadied himself with his free hand against the cold stone behind Malfoy's head. "Ready?"

"Yes," Malfoy whispered, so close to Harry's ear that a shiver ran down his spine.

"Alright. One jump and you're home," Harry said. He thought clearly of Malfoy's flat, the crisp smell of his linens, and re-doubling his grip with a twist of his hand, Apparated them to the only room he had mapped out in his mind.

"Sorry for the—" he began to apologize about the pressure from all sides, the oppressive tightness characteristic of Apparition, but it was useless. Malfoy was already sprinting through the doorway, hands scrabbling at the neck of his robes.

"—squeeze," Harry said into an empty room. He listened as Malfoy's booted footsteps fell heavily down the hall, then up a staircase. A door banged loudly into a wall. Then came the groan of water as it rushed through pipes.

He walked over to steady himself at the mantel in the corner, taking a deep breath and letting it out. Malfoy sobbing would haunt him, but he wouldn't have to care about it if he tried hard enough. He didn't need to learn _why_. The jar was on the mantle just where he'd left it last time. He took a pinch, muttered the incantation to start a fire going in the empty grate.

Flames burst to life, and he watched as they licked the brick walls inside the fireplace and gradually fell in height until they were barely ankle-high.

"Just go," he whispered to himself, the powder rough like baker's sugar between his fingertips. He'd been through this before, alone. The way he liked it, he reminded himself. Always alone. He'd nursed countless friends through horrible bouts of depression and been there through their breakdowns and attacks, but he couldn't imagine asking someone else. And those times, they'd been awful. He'd always felt certain, somehow, that this would be the time that the suffocation would be complete. That it would never get any better—how could it, when all you could feel was dread?—that this was how it would all end for him, and not, say, a train ride to someplace bright.

He sucked a breath in, puffed his cheeks out on the exhale. There was the smart thing to do, and the brave thing.

The grains slipped through his fingers, back into the jar. He headed through the open bedroom doorway and into the unknown.

* * *

**Notes** :

Hi to everyone who has made it this far! I'm early on the ol' posting schedule and aim to continue in this vein, with a new chapter no later than next Thursday, September 17.

Many thanks for reading and leaving kudos, comments and bookmarks to let me know you were here.

xo minta


	4. Obviously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Draco have a talk over tea.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Anxiety attacks

* * *

  
**Friday, August 29, 2003 - Afternoon**  
  
Malfoy's flat smelled of burnt toast. 

It wasn't unpleasant, Harry thought, the scent lingering in the hallway, following him from room to room. Just oddly mundane considering the situation. 

He needed something to calm Malfoy with. What form it would take and where'd he'd find it, exactly, he wasn't sure. He had to take heart that it would become evident to him, and quickly, as the rooms ticked by. Going with his gut rarely failed him, as infuriating as it was to his friends to fall back on as a strategy. 

The first room he came to was a study. It reminded Harry of Hermione's library with its stacks of books, mostly ancient, some new, arranged spine-to-spine on the floor to ceiling bookshelves. 

"File that away for fucking later," he muttered under his breath, noting the desk where tidy piles of parchment, a glass jar with quills and ballpoint pens mixed together, and stapled A4 paper packets with long sections streaked with highlighter yellow were laid out neatly. It was an odd assortment of items for a pureblood, but he didn't have the headspace to spare to consider them more deeply. 

Next was the sitting room, filled with the scraggly sunlight of an overcast day. A dark purple plant in a low pot pulsed with a soft, ominous light, throwing shadows around the simple furniture. Curiously, a television's blank screen acted as a mirror, reflecting Harry's serious face back at him. Harry backed out of the room and shut the door behind him—one wasn't friends with Neville Longbottom for as long as he'd been without developing healthy respect and fear of magical plants one didn't know the names of. That, and he didn't want to know how, or why, Draco Malfoy had a television. Whatever the reason, it couldn't be good. 

The hallway opened up to the kitchen. An impressive selection of pots and pans floated over a massive black lacquered range. Crumbs clung to an empty plate with a tea-stained cup from Malfoy's breakfast, a used spoon and saucer on the countertop next to it. 

It seemed impossible that Malfoy didn't have a house-elf to pick-up after him. Or a maid. He was neat, that much was obvious, but not so obsessive that he needed to tidy the dishes directly after eating. Harry approached the counter, frowning at the incongruous pile. The crumbs spoke to the fact that even though Malfoy'd clearly burnt the toast, yet he'd still eaten it. Was it because he liked it that way? Did he do it on purpose, or had he been in a rush and—

The sound of water running in the pipes cut off, and the silence snapped Harry out of his voyeuristic reverie. Malfoy had been out of his line of sight for a few minutes now, and though his panic attack should be subsiding, Harry knew from experience that it could also be segueing into its next surge. 

His eyes snapped to the last door of the hallway, off the kitchen. The loo, with a rack of jars neatly arranged next to the soaps and creams. They were unlabelled—home brews capped into glass containers—with a few locked behind a protective charm that cast the room in soft blue light. 

" _Accio_ , Draught of Peace," he said, trying his luck. Relief flooded his veins when a brown glass vial popped off the shelf and into his open palm. 

He turned at the end of the hall and took the stairs up to the second-floor landing, passing the heap of Malfoy's robes near the top. One door was open, revealing a bed, the sheet folded down over the coverlet the way Harry had been made to do growing up. Harry was drawn to the details, leaning into the doorway to see more. White lilies filled a glass jar on an armoire, their scent heavy in the stuffy air, ochre pollen like ashes and dropped, yellowed petals around its base. A framed print of a black and white erotic drawing hung over it—pencil, or charcoal, with two men embracing, one buff and busting out of his leather gear, the other lean and shirtless, his stiff cock a soft curve between the straight lines of their torsos. His eyes were drawn to a few silver jewelry pieces in a bowl—cuff links and pearl earrings, some chain necklaces, and a ring with a blue gem the size of a thumbnail set into it. Harry took a step into the doorway and stopped himself, the assault of a smell that was so specifically _Malfoy_ overtaking him; half cologne and shampoo and half sweat, all of it unbearably intimate. This was Malfoy's bedroom, a sight he never dreamed of seeing as an adult. He stepped back, looking to the only other door left ajar, leading to what he assumed to be the bathroom. 

Harry steadied himself at the threshold, taking a deep breath, eyes squeezed firmly shut as his hand rested on the door handle.

 _Please_ , he thought, making a pact with a higher power, _please let this go well_. He'd answer all his delayed post, do anything Victoria asked, show up to every fucking Weasley family dinner with bells on through next year, no excuses. If this would pass and everything could go back to normal, he'd be so good. With whom he was making this deal, he wasn't sure. God. The Devil. Himself. 

_For Malfoy to be okay, even_ , he bargained. He'd settle for okay.

Harry pushed open the door and took in the scene. 

The bathroom was simple. An extended vanity in the same white tile as downstairs held only a wooden hairbrush with blond hair clinging to its bristles and a cup with a toothbrush. The vanity mirror reflected the dove grey of the empty wall opposite, everything lit by the single window—a skylight above.

At the end of it was Malfoy, seated in the bath. At first, only his head and shoulders were visible above the edge of the tub, a deep, claw-footed affair. Pearlescent shirt buttons were littered on the floor like rice, clicking on the tile when they collided with Harry's shoes as he took a few hesitant steps inside. 

"Malfoy," Harry tried, quietly, hesitating near the sink. Malfoy didn't stir. He sat, eyes closed and breathing something awful, in water halfway up his chest. He was still fully clothed; his shirt and trousers, shoes, belt, and gloves were all firmly in place; albeit, the shirt was ripped halfway open, the two halves floating away from his chest. 

He didn't open his eyes as Harry drew nearer and knelt next to the tub. 

"Malfoy, I brought you Draught of Peace. Do you normally take it?"

Still nothing. Harry tested the water with one hand and found it unsettlingly cold. Malfoy's lips were purple, his wheezing breaths coming shallow and much too fast. His shaking rippled the water as though a strong breeze were blowing through.

"Malfoy," Harry tried again, slightly louder now. His voice echoed loudly, sounding peeved. He took a deep breath, mentally turning down his annoyance. Malfoy didn't flinch. 

Then, "Draco."

Malfoy's eyes startled open, red-rimmed, pupils dilating and settling into shape in his irises' strange grey pools. The look he gave Harry startled him, and he swallowed funny, coughing into his shoulder. To be honest, he'd surprised himself by using his given name. 

"You," Malfoy whispered. He struggled to push the words out. "Shouldn't—be—here." His hands rose from the water and gripped either side of the tub, as though he were preparing to launch himself directly into Harry. Harry didn't avoid his stare. He'd been tackled in training by people and Beings twice Malfoy's weight, even when he was sopping wet. 

"Yeah, well, I am, so, we're past that now," Harry ran a nervous hand through his hair, damp at the roots from a layer of nervous sweat, and held up the vial with the other. "Draught of Peace. Do you usually take it when this happens?"

Malfoy pinched his lips together as though a fresh bout of sobbing might overtake him. He nodded once, slowly. 

"Okay, good. Let's start with that," Harry said. He uncorked it and brought its edge carefully to his blue-tinged lips, tipping half into his mouth. Harry was careful not to wince at the sound of his ragged breathing in the small space. He glanced over at Malfoy's shower things—a sea sponge, white and blue bottles of Kiehl's products, shampoo and conditioner and lord only knew what else in bottles with Spanish labels—as the breaths came more easily. It was better, but not good enough. 

"You should go," Malfoy said. His trembling hadn't abated any, the tremors travelling from the tub's ceramic into Harry's fingertips. 

"Can't, I'm afraid," Harry deflected as he re-corked the vial and discarded it on the counter. The gods must be listening to pleas today because, for whatever reason, Malfoy didn't fight, just stared at him, hair limply framing his stern face. 

"Now, can you breathe in for four beats with me, yeah? Like this." Harry demonstrated, puffing up his chest exaggeratedly, and Malfoy held his eyes, attempting the same as Harry continued. "Yeah, and hold, if you can and out," he said, pursing his lips to exhale. 

"Again." He sank deeper into a kneeling position against the tub so that he could face Malfoy. Hooking his right arm around the tub's edge, he beat out the tattoo of their ever slowing breaths into the porcelain. 

It felt like hours that they went on like this. 

"Slower, now," Harry said, moving to eight counts. He noticed for the first time the ring of black around Malfoy's irises. The splotch of blue, the colour of his mother's eyes, in the left one. He kept going, murmuring encouragement and in—hold—and out—hold—until Malfoy's breathing matched his rhythm. All the while, their eyes locked, speaking volumes. It was as painful as it was personal, and Harry hated that he was always there when Malfoy's life was crumbling to pieces, too. Really, really hated that he couldn't let sleeping dogs lie, not when he was fifteen and apparently not now either, and look where it landed the both of them. But a little part of him was annoyed because he wasn't annoyed. Not with Malfoy, not in the slightest. Harry couldn't figure why in the world he felt glad that it was him bringing Malfoy back to a place of peace. Some weird part of him didn't mind being Malfoy's glue.

"Okay," Harry broke the spell as the cramped feeling in his legs suddenly came to him. He rocked back onto the balls of his feet to the sound of his knees crunching and winced. 

"Not getting any younger, are we," Malfoy deadpanned. Harry wished he'd smile after saying it, but his look remained even, a joke falling from lips immobilized from their usual smirking. 

"I think you need out of this bath. What do you think about that?" Harry said, the wince deepening as a great deal of pain in his joints made itself known. He struggled to his feet a little slower than he would have a year ago, that he knew. 

"Why," Malfoy said after a lengthy pause, the sentence dying on his lips. His eyes were lightly lidded, and his tone soft, affectless. "Why are you still here?" The potion was doing its work, softening all his sharp edges. 

Harry shrugged. "I don't have a good answer to that."

Malfoy didn't say anything, just stared at him.

"Alright," Harry slapped his thighs and straightened to stand. "I'm taking that as a yes."

"I don't know if living under the lake made all you Slytherins partial to cold baths, but this one can't be doing you any good."

After a beat, Malfoy rolled his eyes. It wasn't much, it could barely be called an eye-roll at all, but it was enough to loosen the band constricting Harry's lungs. He was somewhat successful in stifling a grin from erupting on his face because if Malfoy was rolling his eyes, he was going to be just fine. Harry might not know much about Adult Malfoy, but he'd known Child Malfoy and Teenage Malfoy and even Death Eater Malfoy. Loathe as he was to admit it, he'd watched Malfoy, and his habits—a lot—and the eye-rolling signalled a return to form.

Malfoy's hands came out of the water with a splash to push chunks of hair back from his forehead as he seemed to awaken to his situation's surreality.

"I was too hot. I thought I'd boil to death," he mumbled, looking confusedly from one hand to the other, "I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe." His voice broke as he worked himself up again, "I had to get out."

"No, yeah, I get it, totally," Harry said to the floor. He pressed a hand gently to Malfoy's shoulder, drawing his watery eyes to look at the where his palm cupped it. "Take a minute. Just breathe."

He withdrew his hand and stood back, wanting to laugh nervously, to say something to fill the air. Comment on the weather. Not that the staring-into-each-others-eyes for the last however many minutes hadn't felt, well, soul-baring. But now that the crisis had passed, Harry was utterly unsure of how the next part was supposed to go. The—heaven forbid—talking bit.

When Harry offered his hand, Malfoy stared at it for a long time, but he took it. Harry pulled him to stand with a steady arm as he found his footing.

"I'm not an invalid," Malfoy's said with a small frown. He let go of the hand that a moment ago he'd all too easily taken, putting distance between himself and Harry with a soft push.

"Is it just me, or was that last lacking your usual venom?" Harry asked. Barbs worked when talking to Malfoy. Some gentle ribbing surely couldn't hurt.

Malfoy scoffed. "I've had a long day, Potter—sue me."

He swayed precipitously on the spot and grabbed hold of Harry's shoulders; the shoulders everyone else seemed all too happy to slap lately. Harry was glad that Malfoy seemed content with squeezing instead.

"Maybe a Pepper-Up Potion is called for to get you back to speed," Harry said. He looked up into Malfoy's face, which was a mistake, because even wet, perhaps especially when wet, it was a face to behold. Water glossed his lips and glued his lashes together into dark golden spikes. Sure, he looked hazy and exhausted, but under that was the austere framework, the delicate bone structure so rare and eye-catching. It was unfair that Malfoy had become so pretty since the trials. Or had he always been pretty, and Harry had simply been too busy to notice?

"You wish, Potter," Malfoy said, but Harry was sure he saw the bit of a smile, and it did something weird to his stomach. He would investigate the feeling later. Or maybe, like most of the times he got this feeling, he would incinerate all traces of it instead. 

"Just saying. Also, couldn't you have done the bath the normal way? You know, undress before?"

"Well, then I'd be standing here starkers," Malfoy responded slowly, his trademark single eyebrow raising, "and what a strange situation that would be for both of us."

Malfoy was still moored to Harry by one arm and was, therefore, privy to the flush his words caused to rise up Harry's neck and onto his cheeks. Harry cast around for something to distract from it before he went full beetroot. 

"Erm, well, lucky you, I know a spell to deal with this. Here," Harry gingerly removed Malfoy's hand from his shoulder and took a step back, the calm of distance clearing his head immediately. He flicked his wand at himself.

" _Vestis Novecius_!"

The change was instantaneous. Wet fabric was replaced with the fluffiest terrycloth as a thick robe took the place of his previous outfit, cinched at the waist and swinging down to his calves. Harry looked over and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the pile of wet clothes from the room.

"Neat, right?" Harry asked. 

Malfoy's face did a funny little thing Harry couldn't decipher. 

"Yes, Potter. Very neat indeed." He nodded, "God forbid we have to endure one another naked."

Harry wondered if his cheeks noticeably blushed at his statement. 

"I'm going to have to ask you to to the drying charm," he said, latching on to a change in subject and crouching to undo the laces to his shoes. "Never got the hang of them myself; everything ends up crispy afterward. Shall I do you too?"

Malfoy stepped from the bath onto the tile, closing the distance Harry had so recently bought himself. 

One side of his lips quirked up into a smirk. It took Harry a moment too long to realize why.

"Oh, come off it! I only meant—"

"I know what you meant, Potter, don't get your wand in a twist."

"I'm not."

"You absolutely are, you prude." Malfoy lowered his jaw, looking up at Harry from beneath lowered lids, a facsimile of a come-hither look. "Do me, _please_." 

Harry felt the red creeping all the way to the roots of his hair now and hated that it had come to this, to him, a full-grown man still being made to feel like an idiot because of something Draco Malfoy said.

"You make it really hard to want to help you with anything, Malfoy, do you know that? Hold on then," Harry said the spell again with a flick towards Malfoy. His clothes popped into a pile at his feet, the sodden gloves landing with a wet _thwop_ on top. Malfoy's robe matched Harry's, thick and white. He mirrored what Harry had done, albeit very slowly, flicking back the sleeves to free his hands as he crouched to unlace his boots.

"Couldn't have done, oh, I don't know, a silk blend, now could you have?" he said conversationally. "I'll have you know I reviewed your transfiguration work from your last visit and—"

Harry gasped, and Malfoy stopped speaking. He stopped moving altogether.

Harry didn't gasp at the Dark Mark. In fact, he barely blinked at it. He'd seen plenty of them before, and it took a lot more than a glorified brand to ruffle him. 

It wasn't Malfoy's left arm that surprised him.

It was his right arm, exposed for the first time since they'd run into one another. Oddly pink and translucent white across the back of the hand, down the wrist and stretching to his elbow's crook. The skin there was shiny and tight across the forearm's top, fused inwards around tendons' lines. 

Like candle wax, Harry thought. Burned. Badly burned.

The moment dragged out until Malfoy abruptly continued pulling at his laces. 

"I should have warned you," he said quietly. Harry couldn't see his face to gauge the feeling behind the words. 

"No need," he said, anxious that he'd done the wrong thing. "I'm sorry, that was rude. I was startled. It's none of my business."

Malfoy removed his shoes and stepped back from them. Harry looked away, into the mirror, but Malfoy's eyes found him there anyway, hard grey meeting emerald green. Malfoy didn't look angry. He didn't look much of anything because he'd schooled his features into something of a mask. There was no telling what he felt.

"It's private," Malfoy said, "but, it's not—"

"We don't have to talk about it," Harry interrupted. He worried his lip, looking to his bare feet. "I know better than to go asking about people's scars." 

He needed some way out of this mess, this thing that was starting to feel a lot like a talk that would involve Trust and Emotions and the other stuff he typically managed so handily to avoid.

"How about, er, tea," he blurted. 

To this, Malfoy crossed his arms and leaned heavily against the wall, clearly exhausted. He looked not unlike he had during the trials—gaunt, even pointier than usual. Harry could make out the mountains of his hipbones through the robe's thickness, and the way it cinched at his waist gave him a wasting look. It seemed self-evident that Harry couldn't leave him like this—he was even more shit at taking care of himself than Harry was.

"Tea," Malfoy repeated, his tone somewhere between bored and incredulous. 

"Yeah. Tea. Everyone has to eat sometime."

"I could...eat," Malfoy said, at length. "But I can't do household charms worth shit either. Drying charms," he gestured at his own soggy pile of discarded clothing, giving Harry the place of mind to levitate them out of the room as well, flicking the assorted pieces to hover alongside his on the landing. He noted that Malfoy's pants were white briefs, not so unlike his navy blue ones. Harry couldn't know why he found this detail interesting.

"I mean, I'll try. Don't say I didn't warn you if everything shrinks," Malfoy huffed. "I can't control the temperature—you'd think they'd have forced us to learn something halfway useful at that godforsaken school, but no, we spent our time on venomous seed pods, and where'd I leave my damn wand," Malfoy muttered, pulling his trousers down to nab the length of wood from its pockets. His rambling filled the void where they should be talking about what just happened, about mysterious scars and panic attacks and Ministry hearings. 

Instead, he rolled the wood between his fingers before unleashing a complicated-looking set of flicks in the laundry's direction, face pinched. Harry couldn't believe how much the expression he wore reminded him of Hermione when she tried to bake.

"My Hot-Air Charm makes clothes steam. It'll be a half-hour before they're done. At least," Malfoy said.

"You got your wand back," Harry said. He hadn't thought much of it, giving it to his solicitor with instructions to get it back to Malfoy somehow. It was something he did during the hazy part of his life, years ago. Why his brain thought now was a good time to bring it up was beyond him. "I'm glad."

Malfoy looked at it and nodded, looked away. 

They stood shoulder to shoulder, both keeping their eyes resolutely on the clothes before them. Malfoy huffed as steam began to rise from the garments.

"Alright, then." He took the stairs carefully, one at a time, picking his way around the pile of robes still laying in a heap. He leaned heavily on the bannister while gesturing with his free hand, and Harry was impressed that even while clearly about to fall over, he managed to come off composed. 

"I'm sure you'll know your way around the pantry better than I do. There's plenty of things in the icebox for sandwiches. I'll make the tea, wouldn't trust you to do it right to save your life," he said this last under his breath, as though Harry weren't directly following him. Harry pulled a face behind his dishevelled blond head.

"You mean so strong you could stand a spoon in it," Harry muttered, unable to help himself.

Malfoy chuckled. 

"Care to share when you picked up on how I take my tea, Potter?"

Harry's face blazed with the heat of a thousand suns. 

"You know, I'd really rather not. Please tell me you've got some Firewhisky I can pour into mine?"

Malfoy chuckled again. It must be the potion relaxing him.

"Only Ogden's finest," Malfoy replied in what must be his haughtiest Lucius impression, "I'll Accio us the bottle."

For the second time since Malfoy had waltzed back into his life, Harry couldn't help it. He smiled.

* * *

Harry made tea mechanically, his hands moving between the tasks with practised ease that brought him back to childhood. He gathered vegetables for a crudité, creamed paprika into chopped eggs, and stuck a knife in a crumbly parmesan slab. He did so in ways that would make Aunt Petunia self-immolate if she could see him and which were, therefore, his preferred methods for doing so. Though his day had taken a turn to the surreal, the familiar motions brought him a dependable sense of calm.

Malfoy prattled on, filling the air with his observations and little sounds of discontent and questions. When Harry turned to answer him one time too many with a chef's knife brandished for demonstrative purposes, he eventually settled into a chair at the table to continue his needling from a safe distance. 

"Couldn't use the pumpernickel for the smoked salmon even though it's right there, Potter? Interesting."

"You do know that your mirepoix is more of a rough chop, don't you Potter?"

"Do you get off on it? Cooking like a Muggle? At least if it's a kink, I can accept it."

"I mean, sure, milk in tea I can understand but cream, Potter?"

Harry set the sandwiches and items for a ploughman's platter down onto the centre of the table. He'd—quite skillfully, if he said so himself—put together a beautiful spread, especially in a kitchen rarely set to use by its owner who, through either derision or genuine unknowing, was little to no help locating anything. The promised bottle of Ogden's was at his seat, and he helped himself to a healthy pour while Malfoy built his plate. 

"Why do you keep it if you don't drink it?" he asked when he gestured to Malfoy with the bottle, and he refused with a slow shake of his head. 

" _Cream_ , Potter," he continued, eyes focused intently on selecting the perfect sandwich from the pile, "and sugar? That's for coffee, obviously. It's criminal to put it in tea. It's you who should be tried for crimes against wizardkind."

Harry recognized this as Malfoy's opening salvo, conveniently disguised as an off-the-cuff comment. He sipped his spiked tea and tapped a nervous tempo into the tabletop, also pretending to be suddenly interested in deciding on a sandwich. Talking was hard—dancing around a subject came as naturally as breathing.

"So its crimes against the realm you've been pulled into the Ministry for?" Harry strived for a conversational tone. "Funny, I must have missed the Prophet's reporting on that."

Malfoy leaned back into his chair, chewing a cucumber sandwich. The Draught had seeped into his movements—he was languorous, moved as though the air in the room were water. It was sensuous, Harry thought, seeing him this way. 

"That's funny, Potter," he said at long last. He smiled a little, the shadow of a dimple on one cheek. "Who's been teaching you how to do that?"

"Be funny?"

"Obviously."

"Has anyone ever told you that you sound like Snape when you say that," Harry said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as a line of discontent appeared between Malfoy's brows. "I've been teaching myself by correspondence, actually."

The dimple deepened. "So it's Granger's doing then. I'll be sure to send her roses."

"Don't talk about Hermione," Harry said sharply. He didn't like where this line of conversation was leading, "You're deflecting."

"So I am," Malfoy responded. The smile disappeared as they lapsed into a silence that lingered. 

Harry broke first, moving to stand, "I can go—"

"That you and I haven't run into one another the last few years was by design," Malfoy interjected.

Harry paused. Lowered himself halfway back into his seat, hovering. "You've been avoiding me?"

"No. Contrary to probably everyone you've ever met, not everything in my life revolves around you, Potter." 

Harry resisted the urge to pull a face, but only barely. He felt not for the first time that Malfoy's words were more for show than anything. A little bit of bark with virtually no bite.

He was being tested.

Harry sat back in his chair, and Malfoy waited, as though for another outburst. When it didn't come, he continued.

"I mean our society, magical beings. I've been away."

"Like, on holiday?"

"Not quite. It doesn't matter where; that isn't the point." 

Malfoy took on Harry's tack and addressed a bowl of pickled cauliflower rather than him. Everything on the table between them seemed suddenly very interesting. His movements remained hazy—he selected an egg-salad sandwich and put it on his plate only to begin pulling it apart, grimacing all the while as though he couldn't quite figure out what it was for.

"You do have a point that you're getting around to, though," Harry said.

"The point I am _trying_ to make," the volume of Malfoy's voice spiked before he caught himself and tried again. "The point is that I have only recently decided to rejoin our society. I had reason to leave, and now I have reason to come back."

When he paused this time, Harry waited in the silence with him. There was no use pretending that he wasn't curious, not now, sitting in a bathrobe and breaking bread with the object of his lifelong obsession.

"After the war, I felt lost. I became unmoored from reality, being in the Manor again. It was, it was..." Malfoy stopped as words failed him. 

Harry realized he'd begun tapping again, fingers rapping to an ever-faster beat. It was a habit Uncle Vernon had tried to spank out of him long ago. He stopped and balled his hands into fists in his lap. He hardly dared breathe too hard for fear that he'd ruin the moment.

"It was awful. You don't need me to explain to you how or why. I thought maybe since I'd survived...Voldemort," Malfoy frowned through the word, impressing Harry by using it at all, "I thought that I could escape it all. The pureblood mania, the pressure of a good match. All of it."

"So, I'm supposed to believe that you're over the pureblood shite then?" Harry asked.

Malfoy flicked a look at Harry and defiantly held his gaze. "How could I have gone through what we all went through and still believe that the blood of one's parents has anything to do with their abilities? It would make me a fool."

"I'd accuse you of being a lot more than just foolish during the war," Harry said. He couldn't help it as his tone grew more biting. Malfoy didn't flinch.

"I prefer willfully ignorant, but whatever makes you feel better."

Malfoy turned to look as the teapot on the counter behind him began to rattle, and Harry closed his eyes and focussed on his breath until it stopped. He was afraid of what his magic would do if this escalated into an actual fight, and Malfoy had always had his number. He could always bring Harry's blood to a full boil with a word, a look.

"This isn't about me feeling better," Harry grit out. He didn't want to lose control now.

"Well, good," Malfoy said, rubbing at a sore spot at the back of his neck, "because I don't enjoy this trip down memory lane any more than you do. I'm not stupid, Potter. I know better now." He sighed. "Hell, I knew better then, but it was safer to pretend."

"It was cowardice," Harry said. Malfoy shrugged. 

"That too. As if being a half-blood meant someone couldn't be powerful. Look at you. Fuck, look at _Voldemort,_ " he added with a snort. "As though being Muggle-born meant your magic wasn't worth as much as someone else's."

"It's Muggle-born now, is it?" Harry could feel his rage spike at the implied epithet. Implied because it was Malfoy talking, and Malfoy didn't use words like Muggle-born. Because Harry had to assume that even when he did, he was thinking the wrong ones.

Malfoy held his eye now. The air smelled like static and ozone. Harry had to be very, very careful.

"Of course it is. I really can't win with you lot—"

"That's fucking rich—"

"No, you listen to me for a minute, Potter." Malfoy slapped his hand on the table and stared him down. "Yes, I'll admit that I made mistakes. I fucked up. But I wanted out a long time before I could get out, and I was made to do things under threats you can't begin to imagine, and I have paid for my sins. And I will continue paying for them for as long as my name is Malfoy, you can trust in that."

"You escaped Azkaban," Harry said. 

"You kept me out, and I'm grateful," Malfoy said, and Harry had to admit that this admission shocked him. His stomach twisted into knots when his eyes met Malfoy's again. 

"Christ, that I ended up back in the Manor itself after the trials," Malfoy shook his head with a tight smile on his lips, as though laughing at a joke that he clearly didn't find funny at all. "You wouldn't get it; you can't understand, having to live there again." He swallowed hard, eyes shining. This was dangerous, Malfoy exposed like this. Unvarnished emotions swimming so close to the surface. 

"What wouldn't I get?" Harry asked carefully. He took a swig of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He hated this, hated the feelings Malfoy brought up. 

Malfoy didn't speak for a long time. "It was my home, Potter. It was supposed to be where I went to feel safe. And it became a place where I'd look at the hallway where I'd first ridden a broom, and only see the place where my aunt threatened my life or the corner where they piled up the bodies Greyback dragged in."

They sat in silence after that, a quiet so thorough that Harry noticed the ticking of a clock somewhere in the flat, tracking the seconds Malfoy spent lost in painful thought. Harry didn't want to care about how shit it had been for him to share his home with the snake-faced maniac and his army of cruel followers. Even as a teenager, a child, Malfoy had choices. Harry didn't like questioning whether he deserved the outcomes of them, though. 

"I swear," Malfoy spoke softly, drawing Harry's attention back to him. "A thousand years won't get the blood out of the tile. I don't know how my parents do it."

"Do what?" Harry asked. 

He looked up, as though surprised at the question. "Sleep there."

Harry was taken aback. This version of Malfoy was incongruous. Before the war, Harry couldn't have imagined a version of Draco Malfoy desperate to live beyond the walls of his family's ancestral home. Now it was clear that the person sitting before him could hardly stand the thought of it. Malfoy Manor had been the site of such unimaginable horror, but this Malfoy saw no glory in it. He was brittle and proud, but he was still human. Haunted by some of the same things that Harry was. Probably hunted in dreams by some of the same guilts. 

Harry started to think about all that he had seen, visions through a snakes eyes, forced Unforgiveables, the recurring characters of his nightmares. Malfoy's voice brought him back to again. 

"I was under the same pressures from my parents as I had ever been, only the rest the world had changed."

"After the trials?" Harry asked. The fight seeped out of him when he got to feeling sad, the way he felt now. 

Malfoy nodded. "They couldn't keep up, or maybe they just didn't care to. I honestly don't know."

"And you?" Harry asked. Malfoy shrugged. The furrow in his brow deepened as he turned his attention on sugar crystals spilt near his plate, pushing them into the pads of his long, pale fingers. 

"I didn't know what my place was in it. What it could be. I had silly dreams, really. Of getting out, and at the same time, keeping them happy."

Harry turned this information over in his mind, his Auror training taking a front seat. Malfoy wasn't being coerced. He didn't have much to win with getting Harry to hear him out, other than his pride, and he was very prideful. Well, that and Harry's acceptance, which when Harry stepped back and looked at things macroscopically, of course Malfoy wanted that too. It's what everyone wanted, in one way or another. To be absolved. Harry realized that Malfoy didn't have a good reason to lie, and therefore, what he was being told was probably the truth.

When Harry finally spoke, it was with incredible difficulty. 

"That must have been, erm." He coughed into his elbow, painfully awkward. "Very. Hard. For you." 

Malfoy's expression became pinched, little wrinkles lining his nose. "I don't expect pity from you, Potter. But yes, it was."

"I don't pity you, Malfoy."

"Good."

He took up his wand and brushed aside the split sugar and crumbs with a practiced flick, settling back into his chair. 

"Let's just say that while back home, I made some poor decisions. When I was given a chance at a new beginning, I took it, and—"

"Wait," Harry interrupted Malfoy, watching his eyes refocus, "I'm lost. How does this have anything to do with what landed you in trouble with the Ministry?"

"Patience, Potter, patience. I'm getting there."

Harry turned his face to the left, looking at Malfoy from over the edges of his glasses. 

"Where did you go when you moved out?"

"Nowhere," Malfoy said, and Harry couldn't hold back his sigh. 

"Why did you get called into the Ministry then? Not for moving out, I mean—"

"I wasn't under _house arrest_ , how dull would that be—"

Harry slapped his hands down on his chair's arms, exasperated, but before he could retort, Malfoy blurted out, "I moved here, you twat, I never got any further than London. How do I say this I," he cut himself off, giving Harry a once-over, all the while muttering in a way that was unsettlingly like Kreacher, "oh, what does it matter, who is he going to tell anyway? Who'd believe it—him, talking to me? Oh, bother it all—I decided to get an education. The education I never had."

Harry drained his mug, letting the smoke of the Firewhisky plume out of his ears as exasperation licked at his frayed nerves. Perhaps a change of tack was needed. A little drama added to the mix.

He slammed down the now-empty mug so hard that an olive jumped from its perch on the platter and rolled off the table. 

"Oh my god, Malfoy," Harry shouted at the ceiling, "stop beating around the bush."

Malfoy gulped. When no other words came from the other end of the table, Harry shook his hands at the heavens for emphasis. Dramatic was good with Malfoy. Dramatic was probably the language in which he was most fluent.

"You're not making any sense, where the fu—"

"I've been livinamonmuggles."

The words came out in a jumble. Malfoy straightened in his chair, a look of bewilderment on his face. It was as though his words had taken him by surprise, too. He shook himself, tried again. 

"I've been living amongst Muggles," he repeated and nodded, as though now he too believed it to be true. "Yes. There. I've been—don't _laugh_ , you fucking disaster—I've been at uni—"

"Have not," Harry gasped, choking on a bit of his own spit. 

"Unbelievable." Malfoy brandished his wand and wordlessly cast something while continuing to berate a coughing Harry. 

"Here I am, ill, baring my soul to you. And you, no better to me than a stranger or perhaps, I am beginning to think, an unhinged stalker—"

"How _dare_ you," Harry clutched at non-existent pearls at this eerily apt barb, pulse racing at the insinuation. "I do not stalk, and if even I did, why would I bother with you?" 

Malfoy narrowed his eyes, looking devastatingly feline. "A question I will surely bring to the authorities if I catch you near me again without due cause, even if they are indubitably in your pocket. Stop trying to change the subject, Potter. Here, take a look for yourself."

The object of his spell floated into his grasp, and he wasted no time throwing the lot at Harry, narrowly missing the bottle of Ogden's. It was the stack of papers Harry noticed in the study earlier—highlighted, dog eared, and stapled packets, clearly printed from a computer. They would have made more sense in the Weasley house if Mr. Weasley had nicked them from a Muggle's bin. 

Harry grabbed the nearest one to read the title.

_Special topics in organic chemistry: reactions and mechanics of organic synthesis. Final examination._

and then a little under that,

_Draco Malfoy._

He may as well have been reading Latin for all that these words made any sense to him. He picked up another. And another. And another. 

_Modern spectroscopic methods._

_A comparative review of IR and UV._

_Identification of crystal structure of the soluble form of channel proteins._

_Draco Malfoy._

_Draco Malfoy._

_Draco Malfoy._

Harry looked up and found Malfoy expectantly watching him for just a moment before he schooled his features into his trademark smirk. If Harry didn't know better, he would have said his first look was one of hope, like he was eager to please Harry with this reveal.

"See? I'm not lying to you."

"What is happening," Harry asked. 

Malfoy ignored him, tapping his wand on the table to set the packets to tidying themselves into a neat pile next to his place setting. He promptly vanished the destroyed pile of sandwich goo, coming out from under the most profound fog of the Draught.

"I'm trying my hardest to parlay my Bachelor's into a Mastery in potions, but that plan's all gone tits up now," Malfoy said simply.

"Your undergraduate work. From uni. In—"

"Chemistry, obviously, Potter. Didn't they teach you anything at Muggle school before Hogwarts? If one understands the world as Muggles do, one could invent things that use magic but benefit Muggles because they won't _know_ that they use magic. Innovation in potion-making has stagnated, and it's because we're ignoring this wealth of knowledge on the chemical and physical properties of substances, not just their magical ones. There's some fascinating literature on the matter from the early sixteenth century, but then the..." Malfoy was becoming animated before he seemed to catch himself and trailed off with a shake of his head. "Anyway, it doesn't matter anymore now, does it, and what do you care? God, why am I even bothering to explain this to you? The point is, the Ministry is doing everything in its power to stop me, and they're going to win, so thanks ever so for making me dredge up my failures for you. It’s been a wondrously fun time all around."

He let out an enormous sigh, hands rubbing at his face. Harry was stunned to silence, not sure which piece of information was the most ludicrous. He didn't have to choose—eventually, Malfoy pinned Harry with a look. It made Harry want to squirm. 

"I honestly don't know why I'm telling you any of this," Malfoy said, eyes narrowed to a glare. "If anyone asks, I was incredibly inebriated on potions you plied me with, and I have no memory of this conversation taking place."

Harry sat in shock. He waited for something implausible to happen, something to reveal the entire afternoon as one long fever dream. When he pinched the back of one of his hands, Malfoy bared his teeth, his brows knitting together as the frown he so often wore settled into the lines of his face. 

"Oh, come on! This isn't a dream, Potter, don't be a wanker. Is it truly so ludicrous that I would—"

"Yes," Harry replied, dazed, "yes, it is."

"Well, it's the truth, and if you knew anything at all about me since we left school, you wouldn't be so surprised." Malfoy's pointed chin jut higher as he said this. If he had feathers, they'd be standing on end. 

"I know all about football, and electricity, and the Queen, and the periodic table now," he said in a rush. "Muggles may not have magic, but they're ingenious in their own ways. They run most of the world, not us."

"Ingenious," Harry echoed. 

"Yes, I said it. Frankly, I can't believe all the missed opportunities we have to make advancements to our own society by incorporating their methods, and vice versa. Also, why can't we have telly? We could vastly improve telly, don't get me started."

"You know what telly is," Harry said. Malfoy ignored this comment completely.

"It's terrible in some ways, how we've left them to their own devices. Have you heard of braces? For teeth?" Malfoy asked conspiratorially. Harry took the chance to pinch himself a second time under the table, just in case. When that didn't work, he pulled the bottle of Ogden's close and filled half his mug. 

"There's a mountain of gold to made off cross-cultural potions alone," Malfoy added.

"Ah, there we are," Harry said, pleased that this new Malfoy wasn't so unrecognizable from the old one. "I knew you'd have some angle."

"Since when is making a living a crime?"

"Since when do you know anything about making a living?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes, looking at Harry as though he were the stupidest animal he'd ever seen.

"A bit rich, that, coming from the sole inheritor of the Potter _and_ Black fortunes—"

"Need I remind you that you grew up in a fucking _manor_ —"

"Well, I'm not living there now, am I? And I've struck out on my own."

Harry scoffed. "You didn't pay for this flat making coffees at Starbucks, Malfoy."

Malfoy's high cheekbones pinked at this.

"This flat was bought with what I received as a coming-of-age gift from my late grandfather Abraxas, I'll have you know. I'm not privy to the Malfoy coffers anymore, unlike a certain trust fund baby in the room."

"Why's that?" Harry asked, but Malfoy only frowned. 

"What that is, is none of your business, Potter. What I was saying is that they ought to throw out that Sorting Hat because it literally picks you Gryffindors because you've got lead for brains." He huffed, having to catch his breath. "Using science and magic in tandem will bring benefits to both our societies, not to mention I could use the boost to my image and my vault at Gringotts. Win-win-win, what's wrong with that?"

"Er, well." Harry stumbled to answer. "Um—"

"Exactly," Malfoy said, nodding in agreement with himself. "Nothing, nothing's the matter with it. Only that it's _me_ doing it. I told you before, I'm not stupid, and I've done some growing up. Maybe it's time you did some yourself." He swallowed hard and huffed an irritated breath. "People change, Potter. I know I have."

Malfoy glanced at Harry, uncertain, perched on the edge of his seat. He was so proud, and his pride was being wounded, repeatedly, with every moment that Harry refused to accept his words as truth. It was written out plain as day across his face, and it was hard to know what it was about this that made Harry want to smooth it over, but he did. He didn't want the story to end, not now. 

"Alright then," Harry licked his lips, thinking, "let's say I believe you."

Malfoy visibly deflated, holding Harry's eye as he sunk back into his chair.

"What's the Ministry sticking its nose in for?"

"The best apprenticeship positions are with the Ministry; everyone knows that," Malfoy said with a dismissive gesture of his hand. "They've got the connections and funding, and the work placements are frankly incomparable."

Malfoy took his time selecting a fresh cornichon to munch on. He liked making Harry wait for it, Harry could tell. He enjoyed teasing him.

"I was accepted by the Ministry, by the way. I quite nearly signed the contract, and that's what dredged all this shite up. It's got to do with this," he said, brandishing his burned arm with a look of boredom.

"You've noticed by now that I prefer to wear gloves in public. It's as much for myself as it is for my parents—long story," he pre-empted Harry's oncoming question with a look that instantly quietened him.

Malfoy sighed and began subconsciously running his hands through his hair as he spoke. 

"I applied to have the concession to wear gloves when I work with the public. A rash decision on my part." 

Harry watched, fascinated, as he conjured a small black ribbon. He combed cornsilk white strands of hair still damp with bathwater back with his fingers and into a high ponytail, then charmed the fabric into a bow to keep it out of his face. In doing this, he revealed that his hair was shorn so short at the sides that it was nearly cropped to his scalp, with only the middle section left long. 

It was...odd, Harry thought, the mix of the modern haircut and the old-school ribbon, the kind purebloods tied their long hair and beards with. But Harry had to admit that he liked it on him. It worked. Like how everything he wore looked good on him, fabrics falling elegantly from his sharp frame. 

Not that Harry thought that he looked good in everything. He just pulled it off. 

Or something. Not that he was noticing that Malfoy looked nice. 

Even though he was.

Fuck. 

Harry drank deeply, realizing Malfoy had been talking all the while that he'd been staring with abandon. 

"...the apprentices do that, eventually, work with the public that is. Especially if you're placed in an apothecary, which is what I'm looking for. I should have known not to have asked."

Harry was lucky that Malfoy's gaze had strayed while he was talking. He leaned into his line of sight to bring him back to the present.

"So, the Ministry pulled you in for a full hearing because you asked to wear gloves?"

"Do you want another ten points to Gryffindor for that, or—"

"Shut up," Harry said, but Malfoy didn't flinch. "I don't follow."

"Clearly. You've never been very good at putting two and two together, have you, Potter?" Malfoy's lips twitched, on the edge of a smile. "The Ministry chose to see my application for a concession to wear gloves as an attempt to hide my Mark from public knowledge." At this, Harry winced. He finally saw where this was going.

"And that goes against the terms of your exemption from recognizance as a former Death Eater," Harry said. Malfoy let out a low whistle. 

"Well done." He clapped slowly, the sound echoing down the hallway. "Somebody's been paying attention in class. And no Granger to copy notes off of, brava."

"But, but that doesn't make any sense," Harry chose to ignore his continued barbs. "You must be able to amend the request? Or recant it, or can't they see your medical records?

"'Attempt to tamper with evidence,' 'auxiliary attempt to tamper with evidence,' and there aren't any," Malfoy ticked the answers off one by one on his fingers. His eyes blinked under heavy lids doing their best to remain open. Harry could see that the potion, food and drink had shored him up some, but he still needed rest. What Harry should do was to politely leave, yet he wanted a little more time. A bit more information to flesh out the image of Draco Malfoy in his mind. 

Something he'd said rattled around in Harry's mind as out of place. "Aren't any medical records?" he asked. 

Malfoy winced as though he was about to take a needle. "I would really rather not talk about it."

Harry filed that tidbit away to look at again later. "Can't your solicitor do anything?"

For the first time since they sat down to talk, Malfoy seemed genuinely uncomfortable. He fidgeted, worrying the edge of his robe between long fingers.

"I don't have one of those, and before you say anything, I have a valid reason. Those that my mother wishes to pay for I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot wand, and those I wish to pay for say the same about me, or I can't afford to pay them off to get over that aversion. There's nothing for it," he said. "Some of us need to learn to live with tempered dreams, Potter. That's all there is to it. The end."

"That's not fair," Harry said. He surprised himself in saying it. 

"I learned long ago that fair rarely has anything to do with it," Malfoy said evenly. "If I don't end up in Azkaban, I'll land somewhere else. I'll make do."

Something about how resigned to his fate Malfoy sounded resonated in Harry, and it must have shown in his face because the way Malfoy looked at him morphed, became shuttered again. Malfoy cleared his throat and stood, steadying himself with a hand gripping the back of his chair. Harry took this as his signal to get up too, swigging the last of the whisky in his mug and levitating it over to the sink. 

"As lovely as it's been catching up with you, Potter, I rather think I've got something to attend to." He made a contemplative face as another, better idea occurred to him. "Or some moping. I wouldn't mind a good, long mope, actually, so if you don't mind, you can dress upstairs and get out."

"Get out? Really?" Harry asked, following him out of the room. "Is that how you usually tell your guests to leave?" 

"You yet again barely meet the requirements of a guest, Potter. Frankly, it's adorable that you think I have any." Harry kept his eyes studiously trained at Malfoy's ankles as he followed him upstairs, all in an effort not to notice his small yet very obvious-in-a-tightly-wrapped-robe arse. Which was, well, it was _there_ , and it was clearly of excellent shape, high and sloping—

"You can use the fireplace in my room to Floo home if you want," Malfoy's voice interrupted his thoughts. "I'm sure our clothes are dry by now. Well, dry-ish, but I can tell you're not picky about what you wear."

Something about the idea of actually walking into Draco Malfoy's bedroom seemed a step too far, and Harry couldn't chance the additional thoughts and questions that might come from it. Not to mention that he was caught somewhere between total exhaustion and the feverish need to act, to do something. Injustice rubbed him the wrong way.

"I'm sure they'll be fine. I'll uh, I think I'll walk a bit. Need to stretch my legs."

"In the rain," Malfoy said. They'd arrived on the landing to the sound of raindrops falling on the roof above them. 

"My Drought Charm isn't so bad," Harry said. "I don't much mind walking in warm rain anyway."

"So you remember you're a wizard when you're outside of the kitchen." Malfoy turned to him, his eyes flicking up and down, taking him all in. "Interesting," he added. 

As they collected their slightly damp clothes from where they hung, Harry caught Malfoy staring at his pants and trousers. 

"Honestly, you've got a personal stylist, a vault full to bursting, and you're still in boot-cut denim. Potter, are you sure you're even gay?"

These words generated the weirdest combination of a swoop of hot anger in Harry's stomach and the fierce heat of embarrassment that bloomed on his face. 

"Yes, I am sure that I'm—"

"Could have fooled me," Malfoy cut him off, "though your interview was something. Must be handy having the editor-in-chief of a major publication in your back pocket."

Before Harry went to defend Luna and himself, he took a deep breath and huffed it out. This was Malfoy talking to him. This was just how Malfoy spoke, probably to everyone. If he thought about it, the fact that he'd suddenly verged back into the territory of jabs meant that he was...trying to be friendly? And covering for it? Probably?

"It...is?" Harry tried.

Malfoy beamed then, a real, genuine smile that brightened his weary face. Harry was for a moment, utterly stunned. Malfoy had a beautiful smile when he felt like using it.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd take The Quibbler, but I suppose it makes sense, considering you're obviously mad," Harry said, and the grin only widened. 

"I'm more of a Witch Weekly man, myself," Malfoy quipped, "but I found a copy of The Quibbler at the Ministry this morning. Several, actually. I'd be surprised if their presses didn't run dry."

Harry realized far too late that he'd been staring at Malfoy's mouth, at the soft fullness of lips, and they stood close enough that he could see where his eyelashes were still clumped together into golden spikes. Malfoy's smile dimmed, and he turned away from Harry, grabbing the last of his things. The redness of his chafed cheeks would take a bit of work to get out; Harry wished, oddly, that he could see Malfoy again soon and know that they'd healed up properly. 

"It's a big thing you did, Potter. Brave." Malfoy directed his words to the clothes gripped tightly in his hands. He glared at them as though they were making him say these things. "Though you could be doing a lot more with the afore-mentioned vault and fame to your name."

"Excuse me?"

Malfoy gave a half-hearted shrug. "You're supposed to be the saviour and all, have the ear of anyone who will listen, but what do you do with all that power?" Malfoy looked to him, eyes bright, and Harry felt his heart speed up under them. "If I were in your incredibly outdated shoes, I'd be swaying policy, changing attitudes. Kissing fewer babies, shaking more important hands, so to speak."

Harry was, for a moment, speechless. Was Malfoy chastising him for not doing enough to be a force for good in the world?

"Maybe this article and your little memoir will finally give you the attention you so obviously crave," he added, a smile curling one corner of his lips.

"Obviously," Harry tried his best Snape impression on for size, which made Malfoy snort-laugh. 

Harry could pinch himself again. He couldn't understand what was happening. He had made Malfoy laugh. He was making Malfoy laugh. Again.

Malfoy seemed about to retort when his eyes caught on something over Harry's shoulder. Harry watched his face close up and harden, and he realized he was looking at the bathroom.

"Enough fun for one day. Maybe if I'm lucky and I start now, I'll sleep right through my sentencing."

His tone aimed for light-hearted, but Harry could feel the tightness there. 

"When is that?"

He shrugged, slight shoulders sloping inwards. "Beyond me to know. They'll send an owl."

Harry opened his mouth to ask another question, then decided to let it go. After all, what could he do?

"I, erm. I hope it works out for you," he offered. Malfoy eyes widened a fraction. He nodded.

"Listen," Malfoy said, hugging his clothes against his chest like a shield, "thank—"

"Nope," Harry raised a hand to cut him off, "don't even say it. I'll—I'll consider it an insult that you think you have to," he said, the words coming back to him.

The funny thing happened to Malfoy's face again. For all his training, Harry couldn't read him.

"Well, see you around then, Potter," Malfoy said, stepping into his bedroom, his burned hand casual on the doorframe. He wasn't ashamed of it, clearly, though it was a secret he was willing to give up his dreams to keep. There was a lot to Malfoy that Harry couldn't figure out. 

"But not anywhere that doesn't have a publicly available guest list, or it will be stalking, and I will have you thrown in Azkaban for it, saviour or not," he said by way of farewell. "You really can get out now."

"See you, Malfoy," Harry said as the door to Malfoy's bedroom closed behind his ever reluctant host.

* * *

The sky was an explosion of fiery colours painted by a spectacular sunset when Harry returned to Grimmauld. He'd Apparated from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, Chelsea to Smithfield, Holborn to Whitehall, walking for long stretches in-between until his stomach ached and his calves shook with each coming step.

Upon entering the house, he was greeted by a crotchety Kreacher who took the time to inform him that there would be no supper for the master tonight due to a litany of other household tasks Kreacher had to complete because of the master's ineptitude in keeping the old house happy. Harry winced a smile and began mentally ticking through his favourite takeaway spots that didn't find it strange to have to drop off his orders curbside.

Low hooting emanated from the kitchen, where he discovered not one but three owls from Maude's Magical Mailer service waiting for their payment and treats. They were clearly ruffled by the duration of their wait—Harry was nipped by the tawny when he dropped coins into its signature blue silk payment pouch. He then noticed the distinct smell of their pellets rising from the far side of the table. The smallest of the three appeared to be napping, and Harry decided against waking it from its much-deserved sleep after having hauled so many packages to his home.

"No wonder Kreacher's in a tiff," he muttered to himself, casting a distracted _Scourgify_ at the table. He slumped into a chair, feeling doubly finished, just looking at his mountains of mail.

Each owl had brought with it its own pile of post, pre-sorted, scrolls flattened and stuffed into the jewel-toned envelopes favoured by Maude. He had no chance of keeping up with it all, he thought miserably—maybe he could call in a favour from Tom and Victoria to help him deal with it over the weekend. 

Or maybe he could burn it all. Become a hermit. Revoke his secret-keeper's privileges and lock himself in. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived To Become a Crazy Recluse.

Before despair could take him altogether, an idea came to him. Eyeing the sleeping owl, he slunk from the room and broke into a run up the stairs to find a quill and ink, and quickly scratched out a letter. Deciding against trying Kreacher's patience any further, he located the owl nuts himself and grabbed a handful.

Running full-tilt back into the kitchen, his entrance startled the last owl awake. He slowly approached, a hand full of treats extended, which the little owl only too happily attempted to swallow whole.

"Good bird, there, that's good now, isn't it? Now, I'm paying you for the mail," he said as he dropped a few sickles into its pouch, "and I'm hoping you can do me a small favour. I'm adding a tip for Maude for the trouble, and all the treats are yours. What do you say to that?"

The owl didn't even pause for breath through its eating of the treats but let out a small hoot that Harry interpreted as acquiescence. He rummaged in his pocket for another few sickles for the by-now nearly full payment pouch.

"Alright, then. Can you take this to my solicitor?"

Having eaten its body weight in treats, the owl stood at attention as Harry tied the parchment to its leg. 

"His name is Aedan Sparks, and his office is at the Inns of Court. I'm not sure where he lives, though," he added, scratching the back of his head. 

The owl only blinked at him before taking off, back upstairs to the post-window.

"I'll take that as a yes," he muttered, collapsing back into a chair.  
  
He pulled out his cell phone and began constructing his order for a curry. Resting his head on his crossed arms for a second's respite before dialling the number, it was in this position that he fell deeply, blissfully, asleep.

* * *

**Notes** : And so the wheels turn and the boys get to know one another a little better. I can't wait for the *cough* porny-bits *cough*. Which are coming soon, I promise :)

Next chap out by **Sept 25, 2020**!


	5. Draco Malfoy, Boyhood Nemesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ministry gets involved, the boys have a spat and a chat over a spot of coffee.

* * *

**Saturday, August 30, 2003**

Hunger roused Harry from dreams of harried Ministry employees in high-heels tap-dancing to Celestina Warbeck standards. He was about to join a chorus singing before the Wizengamot and was saved the trouble when his stomach, shrunken to the size of a prune, woke him with an epic growl.

He came to with drool dried in a white line on his wrist, his upper body sprawled at an alarming angle on the kitchen table. He stubbed his toe on his way upstairs for a quick slash, a splash of water on his face and an oft-forgotten Sparkle-Tooth Charm before attempting to work out the crick in his neck through rigorous exercise. 

It didn't work. Returning to the kitchen in a new change of clothes, neck sore as ever, Harry summoned Kreacher to beg for a bit of toast and tea. 

"The Master is not to be sleeping in the kitchens," Kreacher said, eyeing him warily. 

"I didn't mean to." Harry tried for a smile that would grant him leniency. "I had a long day, was all."

The elf took pity on him and delivered his breakfast without the usual bemoaning, and with the addition of a sliced orange and bacon, brightening Harry's mood considerably. 

The ancient wooden wireless crackled on to play his favourite station in the corner, a new trick it had learned. Sirius had been the last person to physically touch the dial, leaving it on a Muggle station out of Croydon, specializing in rock and blues standards. Every time a Pink Floyd song came on, Harry smiled and thought about how Muggle rock music had been a backdrop to much of his godfather's rebellious youth (or so he liked to imagine).

When the news came on at half-eight, Harry sat back in his chair, brushing crumbs from his t-shirt. With a full belly and a caffeinated mind, he dared to glance over at the mountain of mail looming from the far end of the table.

"You promised," he said, remembering his prayer to an unnamed deity as he stood and made his way over to the table's head. He sighed, and it was like the kitchen sighed with him, a little dust trickling down from the rafters into his rat's nest of hair. He'd fulfil the promises he'd made to make Malfoy okay because though he didn't have religion, superstition did hold him in its thrall.

"You is going to be needing this." 

Kreacher reappeared at his elbow, sliding an enormous ceramic mug full of builder's strength tea, cream and all, at his side. 

"Thank you, Kreacher," Harry said, and the ancient elf only shrugged as he shuffled away, muttering about the state of the pipes. Harry took a bracing sip and surveyed his day's work. Daisy yellow envelopes indicated mail that was Friendly & Familiar—friends and family only—and there was one of those, thick as his thumb. Emerald green was for Official Business—there was maybe a half-dozen of those, though they were all as wide as Harry's fist, the wax seals cracking under the pressure of their contents. No doubt invitations and well-wishes from ministers from England and beyond. He tackled the thinnest of the envelopes first, in glossy cherry red—Urgent Matters.

Cracking the seal, Harry pulled a single sheet of parchment from within. It bore the stamp of his solicitor's office, Sparks & Stokes, and a sum of galleons that Harry had great difficulty comprehending. Doing the mental maths to convert the amount into pounds, he barked a laugh. He could buy a new broom for the sum. Or a car. A really, really nice car.

"Well, that can't be right," he said, amused. RUSH was capitalized, but after reading that and the heading, he put the bill aside to review later. The most his solicitor could have managed was to have looked into Malfoy's case, asked someone to collect evidence. It was clearly an error and nothing to worry about.

He devoted the next hour to respond to the letters in the emerald-coloured envelope. They were so carefully worded as to be meaningless. Harry was impressed at how many euphemisms for "gay" could be made in the English language, frankly. A spell to copy out boilerplate responses sufficed for most of them. He was careful not to commit himself to anything—no galas, no balls, no silent auctions—as Victoria had taught him how to neatly side-step those invitations and funnel them back through her for review. Robards' offer of a consultancy position was put aside to be dealt with later, too, generating a low-grade sense of worry in Harry's stomach. He wasn't ready to re-join the Aurors, not yet, not even in a comfortable, paper-pushing position. 

Even with all the copying by spell, by noon Harry's hand developed a cramp, and he was only just getting to the letters from those he knew personally when a buzzing sound interrupted his humming along to the radio.

It was a Firecall coming through the grate, an annoyance, but not worth getting up for. Anyone who knew him knew that he closed his Floo on weekends, with overrides in place for only his inner-circle.

He ignored it, and within a minute, the buzzing died down, acid-green flames fading back to a gentle orange.

Harry returned to his letter to Luna, asking how sales were and if she was free for some flying in the coming days when the buzzing returned. 

"Piss off," he hissed, casting an angry look at the grate. A wrong location sure, that he could understand. An intrepid reporter trying their best to catch him for a reaction-quote, alright. But to call again? And let it buzz on and on like this? When the line was clearly closed?

The buzzing died. 

"The nerve of some people," Harry huffed, turning back to his letter. He signed it and leaned back in his chair, dreaming up the perfect sandwich for lunch when the buzzing started up again.

"Oh, for Merlin's fucking sakes," he yelled, stomping over to the grate to kneel. The stones dug into his knees, one more pain in his day.

He waved a hand to take the call. 

"Alright, what is it," he said and was surprised to see his solicitor's eyes blink out from the flames.

"Mr. Sparks?"

"Good day, Harry," Sparks spoke slowly; he was as old as the days were long and seemed to reserve his energy for the courtroom. "I'm glad you're there. Please accept my apologies sorry for the disturbance."

"If this is about the bill, I received it, but I would think that payment could at least wait until business hours," Harry said, breathing deeply in a bid to remain civil.

Sparks frowned behind his wire-rimmed glasses with apparent confusion. "I'm surprised you've already received that. I knew Maude's owls were fast, but—never mind that. Payment is net-thirty days, as is typical." 

Typically solid as granite in-person, Harry could tell that something was amiss with Sparks. His eyes kept flicking nervously off to the side. 

"About that, it seems a bit steep considering I only asked you on the case yesterday. And if not that, what's so important that you've got to ring me this morning, then? I'm sorry I was ignoring you, I try to keep—"

"It's only that the person you asked about, well, he's here and—" Sparks looked off to the side and said something indistinguishable before facing forwards again, "perhaps I should let the two of you hash this out. Good day to you, Harry, and good luck," he said in an uncharacteristic rush before Malfoy's face replaced his.

"Malfoy," Harry said, reeling back from the grate. A familiar look of mutiny pulled Malfoy's features taut.

"In flesh and blood," he snarled. "Now let me through you useless twat. I can't admonish anyone properly by Firecall."

"Malfoy, I, what—" Harry stammered.

"Budge over; I'm coming through."

"Look, whatever this was about—"

" _Move_ ," Malfoy bellowed. Startled, Harry fell back onto his seat quite ungracefully, forced to scramble out of the way as the flames glowed a brighter green and climbed to fill the whole of the fireplace. Malfoy stepped out of them, hands already on his hips in a fighting form reminiscent of Mrs. Weasley at her worst.

"What the fuck," Harry said. He stood and found himself quickly silenced by a single gloved finger held inches from his face. 

"Don't you 'what the fuck' me, Potter, don't you _dare_ ," Malfoy spat, his eyebrows lost in the fringe of his dishevelled hair. "It is me who will be asking what in the _fuck_ you think you're doing, interfering in my life like this. Where do you get off? Couldn't stand the thought of not taking the credit for saving even one fucking soul, is that it? It's pathetic is what it is—"

"Malfoy, stop," Harry waved a hand, fury rising in him. He didn't think a single spell or incantation, but his effect was evident. Malfoy's mouth snapped shut as a chair swung out from the table and knocked him behind the knees, forcing him to sit. His eyebrows had nowhere to go with this new affront, but he didn't have any recourse for the moment. His hands remained loosely at his sides. Harry could tell this was due to his magic and not a sudden burst of calm on Malfoy's part.

"I'm sorry," Harry said with a sigh, "I didn't mean to do that. Specifically." 

He sat across from Malfoy, careful to leave enough space that neither could lunge and throw a punch that would land. After a few calming breaths, he mirrored Malfoy's position and closed his hand to end the spell's hold. 

"The effect is the same, but sometimes I can't control what my magic does."

Upon regaining control of his limbs, Malfoy's hand immediately went to his cloak pocket to draw his wand. He aimed at Harry's chest, sucking in angry breaths as Harry took him in. His was basically the same outfit as yesterday: dark, tailored robes and a white oxford, black gloves. The dark circles hadn't left from underneath eyes that flashed bright and sharp.

"Unbridled magic is for babies, Potter," he said, lowering his wand. "You need to get a bloody grip."

"Noted."

Malfoy slanted a look at him that was pure spite. "I don't need to be saved, Potter."

Harry cocked his head, confused. 

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Why were you at Mr. Sparks' office?"

"Because he came and represented me at my sentencing, or are you actually going to sit there and pretend that he isn't your personal fucking counsel?"

Harry heard the words but didn't understand them. 

"What, today? They couldn't have done—"

"My sentencing? Today? They could, and they did, and I was perfectly fine with whatever the outcome. But no, that's not good enough for famous Harry fucking Potter, you just had to pry, had to—"

"I didn't know, Malfoy, honest." Harry sat back in his chair, biting at a thumbnail. "That explains the bill, though," he added in an undertone. Draco took a deep breath, gearing up for another diatribe, but Harry beat him to it. 

"I don't deny it, yes, I asked for Aeden—Mr. Sparks—I owled him last night to look into your case. Into if there was any way, legally, you know, for you to get off. I wanted to—"

"Help?"

Malfoy leaned forward, his eyes flickering quickly between Harry's, searching for something. Harry's mouth went dry. 

"Why would you want to help me?"

Harry was caught by Malfoy's eyes. The edges of his vision blurred, and he was back at the table last night, the takeaway menu in his hand, mobile in the other. What had he been doing just before? The owl, the little one. He felt light, his mind going fuzzy like when you've blown too hard into a balloon, felt—

"Hey, stop that!" 

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head as though knocking water out of his ears. He brought down the walls of an Occlumens inside his mind, shuttering off the vulnerable parts, the thoughts he couldn't afford to have coming to the surface. 

"You can't just go using Legilimency on someone whenever you like. My thoughts are private!" he yelled. The air was sucked from the room as the lights flickered, as though a sudden squall had kicked up.

Malfoy didn't show fear in the face of his anger. He looked...confused, sitting still and clench-jawed as his fringe whipped across his face. 

"That was so fucking illegal, beyond just being rude," Harry spat. "Find what you were looking for in there?" 

Malfoy blinked. A long moment passed, the only sounds Harry's hard breathing. Malfoy wouldn't stop staring at him. 

"Why don't you hate me?" he finally asked. The fight had gone out of him like the air from a split tyre. He sat forwards and rested his forearms on his thighs, slouching for the first time Harry could recall. "You've hated me since first year."

"Second," Harry said.

"What?" Malfoy looked up, his confusion visibly deepening. 

The air stilled. Harry hadn't meant to say that. 

"I didn't hate you until second year. Not properly." Harry pulled out the thumb that had made its way back into his mouth at the taste of blood. The thumbnail was gnawed down to the quick. It would smart later; he'd need to beg Kreacher to mend it for him. 

"It's a lot of work, to hate someone," he said, concentrating on the thumb's throbbing pain. He couldn't look at Malfoy. "I don't particularly like you, but it's not the same."

"What's changed, then?" Malfoy asked at last. 

"You have," Harry said, exasperated. "And I have too. Despite what the press and the public might think, you're not a monster, Malfoy. Just a fucking prat."

"Is that so?" Malfoy's voice was playful, lilting. It was as if he took _not a monster_ as a compliment. 

"Yes," Harry answered stiffly. "I've met real monsters, so I can tell the difference."

"And what if I've been ever so bad these last few years? You don't know me, Potter."

Harry held his ground. Malfoy was tiring, but he wasn't right, and Harry had never been able to let him feel like he'd won. "I checked; I'd know." Malfoy opened his mouth to retort but thought better of it, shut it again. 

"No offence or anything, but you were barely a Death Eater, to begin with. Sixteen hardly counts, and it's not like you killed anyone." The lights flickered back to their regular brightness. Harry looked around the eaves, checking to see if he'd actually conjured storm clouds with his temper. "Even when you tried to, that wasn't you. That was Voldemort manipulating people. It's what he did best, after all."

Malfoy bit his lip then, blinking away some emotion, and Harry wished he could take it back. Malfoy didn't know that Harry had been on the tower the night Dumbledore fell, didn't know the extent to which Harry knew of his actions since the war. It was odd, Harry realized, that most of Malfoy's redeeming actions were the things he hadn't done; not uttering a Killing Curse, not identifying Harry, not succeeding at anything he was meant to have. His cowardice was his cunning, in some ways. But could it be called cowardice, really, to have gone against Voldemort's wishes?

"No offence taken," Malfoy said smoothly, sitting straight once more. 

Harry sighed, making a fist and letting it go to release some of the tension building inside of him. He wished he wouldn't get so worked up around Malfoy, hoped that he could keep his temper in check and at least pretend to be unaffected. 

"I couldn't believe you couldn't find someone to represent you," Harry grit out. "Anyone. It wasn't right."

"Still," Malfoy raised an eyebrow, "I'm easy to hate—my apologies—dislike. I know I'm a prick a lot of the time. I was to you and yours. Why stop now?"

"What's the point anymore," Harry said, raising his hands in question. "Hmm? What's the point of hating you, now? What good does it do? What does it solve?"

Malfoy's forehead smoothed as he leaned back, arms crossed loosely and legs widening ever so slightly. The pose telegraphed unearned confidence, was precisely the kind of cocky posturing that made Harry want to slap him and at the same time, sort of, sink down to his knees and suck his cock. Well, maybe not his cock, but the genre of men like Malfoy's cocks. The preening plonkers who thought they owned the world and took so naturally to taking what they thought they were owed from Harry, and oh, wasn't that fucking telling. 

Harry sat back in his chair, relaxing his shoulders from where they'd remained stuck up by his ears. He wished for all the world that Malfoy would cross his legs so that the outline of his prick down his trousers' left leg wasn't so painfully obvious. 

"I didn't know you'd become so analytical of your emotions," Malfoy said.

"Shut up. I just—We're grown now." Harry's eyes darted down again. Was Malfoy not wearing any pants? He wouldn't—

"Do you feel grown?" A smile tugged at Malfoy's lips; he must have caught Harry looking. But if he'd noticed, why wasn't he bothered? "Because you sure don't act like it," he added.

Harry barked a laugh, surprising himself. 

"Me? Not a bit." He rolled his shoulders, willing the tension building in them to dissipate. "I haven't a fucking clue what I'm doing most of the time. You?"

Malfoy made a little sound in his throat as he contemplated the question. 

"Some days, I feel about a thousand years old. But no. I don't."

They sat in silence. It could almost be considered companionable, but the underlying tension in the air wouldn't lessen. 

"Excuse me," Harry said. He rose and grabbed two bottles of ale from the fridge. Cracking one, he sat again, leaving the other for Malfoy on the table. Malfoy nodded his head in acknowledgement. 

Harry took a deep swig, the cold feeling of it running down his throat a welcome refreshment. The condensation gathering on the neck of the bottle at least gave his fingers something to fiddle with. To hell, if it wasn't yet noon. 

"Now, if you don't mind, it's you who came barging into my house, and I still don't have a clue why," Harry said. "Did you lose the case?"

Malfoy sniffed and shook his head. "We won. He won it. I think he collected a memory or two from some Muggles who know me."

"Imagine that. You, saved by the good word of Muggles." Malfoy shrugged, as though this weren't patently ridiculous. "Well, that's for the best, isn't it?"

Malfoy winced. "Yes, Potter, yes, it's all well and good, only now you've saved me again. Hurrah for fucking you."

"Did the—" Harry gestured vaguely, struggling to phrase his question, "did the, uh, stuff about your arm, did that get put in?"

Malfoy's general look was one Harry couldn't place. Bewildered, maybe. 

"Uh. Yeah. Yes. Your man introduced it in cloistered chambers, so it's not public knowledge."

"That's good, isn't it?" Harry asked the tabletop. Why was having Malfoy admit simple information so like pulling teeth? 

"Yes," Malfoy said. Harry glanced at him and caught him staring, eyes unfocused. He snapped out of his stupor, a frown returning to his face. "It is good. But did you ever once consider that maybe I didn't need saving? That perhaps I don't want to feel that I owe you something as valuable as my liberty again?"

"I really didn't know that you'd be sentenced today. Frankly, it pisses me off that the Ministry is still doing these secret hearings. No counsel, scheduling for the weekend so the press won't get traction out of the story, everyone out of the office." Harry's tone was cold. Anger twisted at his insides. "It's dirty tricks. I'll be having a word with Kingsley about it."

"See what you did, just there? I mean— _Christ_ ," Malfoy slapped the tabletop, his voice rising dangerously, "I don't need you going in for me to the Minister of fucking Magic, alright? This is some fucking game of tit-for-tat that I didn't agree to play. Just—stop, with me. How many ways do I have to tell you to leave me alone?"

"Fine, I'll leave you to rot next time," Harry said acidly. "Go do whatever the fuck it is you do all day. You don't owe me anything. We don't have to do—this—again," Harry waved a dismissive hand.

Malfoy scoffed. "Whether you care about it or not doesn't change the fact that I owe you, Potter. That's the most annoying part, and that's saying something because it's you I have to deal with."

Harry dragged the edge of a fingernail over the beer bottle label, seriously considering throwing it into a wall. It took nearly everything he had to keep his voice level. "I don't want anything from you, Malfoy. You don't want to see me again—go for it. Let's call it even and go our separate ways, okay?"

" _Let's call it even_ ," Malfoy mimicked, dropping his voice low. Harry was surprised at how easily his mouth twisted to fit an incredibly on the nose copy of Harry's Surrey accent. The thought occurred to Harry that this was likely due to Malfoy spending an inordinate amount of time impersonating him, which just seemed...funny.

"As if. How is it that you still understand nothing of debts between wizards, of all people?" Malfoy stood, looking at Harry like he was a confusing and slightly disturbing painting in a gallery. 

"I will pay you back, Potter," he added with finality.

"Fine," Harry said, slamming down his bottle on the table a mite too hard. He hated how Malfoy brought out the petulant child in him, even as he crossed his arms with a huff.

"Fine!" Malfoy spat back, an impetuous look on his face. The fierceness of his energy made Harry want to grab him, throw him up against the wall. Muss him up—rile him the way he infuriated Harry.

"I suppose it's up to me to sort out how?" Malfoy was breathing fast, panting almost, and Harry had the strangest thought that this was probably close to getting him riled up in other ways. A flash of what it would be like to throw him against a wall and surprise him with a kiss went through his mind, unbidden. He'd probably bite Harry's tongue directly out of his mouth. Harry shook away the thought. It was probably the result of his having poked through Harry's mind, leaving an imprint behind.

Harry balled his hands into fists, forcing himself to look away from Malfoy's flushed, pointed face. "As I said, I really don't care, Malfoy."

"That's a yes, then. As usual, foisting the real work on others." He turned and looked down the room's length, taking in the low stone ceiling and kitchen off to the side. "How do I get out of here, again?"

"The front door is that way," Harry said, gesturing at the stairs.

"I can't be seen leaving your home," Malfoy sneered but turned to leave anyway. Harry clearly heard him muttering on his way out, "What kind of a fucking idiot are you?"

"You could Apparate from the lawn; the house is unplottable." The clicking sound of Malfoy's boot heels on the stone pavers continued to stomp away. 

Harry stood, the better to loudly call out at him. "No-one can see you before you step into the street."

No response. 

"The door is to the left, and don't brush the curtains!" he yelled.

"I know all about Aunt Walburga," Malfoy shouted back at him from the next floor, "she's my great aunt, you know." More stomping, then the loud creak of the front door accompanied by his screaming at top volume, "And _don't you fucking talk to me like I've never been in this house!_ " 

The front door slammed shut with such voracity that Aunt Walburga did indeed wake up, leaving Harry to deal with her for all of a half-hour. He found himself itchy with sweat and un-satiated anger after that. He attacked a loaf of bread to make two ham and swiss and pickle and tomato and anything-else-he-could-fit-on sandwiches, barely tasting them as he stuffed them down. Collapsing into a couch shortly afterwards, his hope for a wisp of wind to enter windows thrown wide open to cool his sticky skin went unfulfilled. Nothing but the occasional bee or fly wandered in to buzz about. 

An impetuous nap was interrupted by a new owl's pecking, its silk pouch jangling in his ear. Paying it off, Harry returned to the basement kitchen and groaned at the sight of a newly made mountain of mail. He collapsed dramatically to the kitchen floor to sulk.

"No good deed goes un-fucking-punished then, is that it?" he asked the walls. Kreacher, from some unseen corner, croaked a laugh. 

Harry felt as though his writing hand might well and truly fall off when he scratched his initials onto the bottom of the last letter of the day. He spelled the rolled scrolls into a pyramid and shot off a note to Maude to send every owl that wasn't working by his tomorrow to deliver them.

It was twilight, the sky a purplish-orange, when Harry thought himself done for the day. Nursing a tumbler of Firewhisky, he tried to enjoy the last rays of sunshine from the ledge of the owl-window, one leg dangling out precisely the way Hermione always told him not to for fear of him falling all three storeys. What started off as a speck in the sky grew into a familiar shape as it advanced towards him. Not a gull or a pigeon, then; his heart sank as it swooped directly for him. 

The little owl from the day before had returned to deliver a canary-yellow envelope into his lap. 

He sighed and put down his drink, dropping a few knuts into the change-pouch. "Who are you," he asked the owl, savouring the feel of downy feathers beneath fingers. "Are you a boy or a girl?" 

The owl blinked.

"I'll take that as a yes. I'll have to think of a name to call you, pretty thing."

He ripped the envelope open with his sore thumb. It held a single sheath of parchment, thick and smooth to the touch. The elegant, swooping script was familiar even after all the intervening years since school.

_I have questions. La Caffetteria, Kensington, 8 a.m. tomorrow. Bring the invoice. Don't be late._   
_D.M._

* * *

**Sunday, August 31, 2003**  
  
"Potter, it is far too early, and I am much too irritable to put up with that tapping. What is it that's got you all," Malfoy frowned and gestured wildly as he arrived the next morning, apparently already at a loss for words at how much Harry annoyed him.

Harry made fists, hoped that he could manage a few minutes without doing anything too destructive or annoying. He'd drank his first coffee too quickly for want of something to do with his hands while waiting. That he'd arrived at the cafe thirty minutes early was beyond him, considering that the sun had barely peeked over the horizon. That he was nearly finished his second cup and Malfoy wasn't even late to their meeting-sounded-too-formal-but-coffee-date-too-trite was also driven by his own poor decision making. But the jitters had started long before he arrived. 

He'd been nervous as soon as he woke, staring up into dark eaves above his bed. His shower wank was indecently focussed on blowing someone with an Etonian accent, a turn-on he hated admitting even to himself, and then, to top it all of, he'd been inordinately nervous as every combination of t-shirt and trousers that usually felt comfortable suddenly didn't work, were too shabby, too old. 

That he'd ended up in the white t-shirt Hermione said made his biceps look nice, and the stovepipe black jeans that Reza told him were "the new silhouette," that he felt like he was trying— _that_ —he didn't want to think about at all. 

"How did you know it was me?"

He'd applied a gentle glamour, enough that it would take a couple of minutes for a person looking for him to realize that it was him. He looked like a cousin of himself—related, but not entirely the same.

Malfoy snorted as he pulled off his jacket. "Just because you rearrange your features a bit doesn't make you unrecognizable, Scarface." His eyes darted to Harry's hands, his arms, torso, back to his arms, lingering, then around to his face. If it wasn't Malfoy doing it, Harry would think he was being checked out. 

"No, but—"

"You're a shit Occlumens. I could tell it was you because I was listening for your thoughts. They have a pitch, sort of." A look of discomfort passed over Malfoy's face, as though this fact was new to him too, and he didn't like it. "It's nothing, I could—You just. I recognize your sound." He looked away, peeved. "You wouldn't get it."

"Oh. Okay."

Malfoy slung his green bomber jacket with safety-orange lining across his chair-back as he sat. Harry leaned in; he smelled expensive.

He leaned back, startled to be smelling Malfoy again. 

"Er, it's the coffee, sorry. I, I'll—"

Malfoy huffed. "No, Potter, it's not."

He continued speaking to Harry without meeting his eyes, flicking open the snaps to his gloves. Today's were short and tan. 

"Now hand over that bill before you conveniently forget that I owe you more than, you know, _my freedom._ "

Harry handed over the parchment, shrunken for convenience to the size of a stamp. Malfoy pocketed it and relaxed back into his chair, looking every bit the part of a young Muggle man who belonged in sleek Italian coffee shops. Today he wore a long-sleeved white t-shirt with three blue stripes down the sleeves, a single silver stud in one of his ears. His lips looked soft and a bit wet, as though he'd just finished some snogging someone before he arrived. If Harry had a thing for pinched, modelesque-type blonds, he'd say he looked outstanding. Which, alright, sure, if you took a look at his track record, he kind of, sort of, did.

"Malfoy," Harry balked when he recognized the motif of his shirt. "Are you wearing Adidas?"

"Don't change the subject, Potter." He pulled the cuffs of the shirt down over his knobby wrists. "You're always fidgety, and I don't think it's just when you're around me. It's insufferable. Given a chance, you would have drummed a hole straight through my dining room table the other day. Now out with it, whatever it is that's got you so...this."

Harry sighed. He strained to remember what parts of Malfoy he liked enough to agree to this meeting-thing in the first place. To look forward to it, even. Other than his smell. Not that he fancied how Malfoy smelled, it was how his cologne smelled. 

Because there was a difference. 

"I don't know."

Malfoy squinted at him. "Don't know, or won't tell me?"

"Jesus, I—I've got the energy to burn and nothing to do with it, alright. I thought you had actual questions for me?"

"We'll get to those," Malfoy brushed him off. "What do you normally do with it? You can't possibly spend all your time being this annoying." Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "It's no wonder your house hates you."

"What? My house doesn't _hate_ me—"

"Your elf sure does," Malfoy said, picking up a menu to read with a look of pure boredom.

"How would you know if Kreacher hates me? Also, it's more of disdain than hate; he used to—"

"He didn't offer to take my cloak yesterday, which a well-trained elf such as himself would only forget," he added in air-quotes, "to do as an affront to their master. Merlin, sometimes I can't tell if you're a wizard at all, these are the _basics_ , Potter."

"It's not like I grew up with a stable of indentured servants, Malfoy. Much less had anyone around to teach me that sort of shite." Harry took a deep breath as the edge of his menu started to curl up, slowly singeing. He pushed it to the side and covered the corner with the rotund sugar dispenser. No use setting fires due to Malfoy's impertinence right off the bat or giving him the pleasure of knowing how far he'd crawled under Harry's skin.

"He's like that with everyone, trust me," he continued. "I don't think he was home when you came over, anyhow. The Hogwarts kitchens have him half the time, too—"

"Boring, don't care," Malfoy interrupted breezily. "So what is it that you do, then? With all this extra energy, now that there isn't a world to save? Couldn't be sneaking about looking for places to stick your nose where it doesn't belong, could it?"

"What are you on about? Just spit it out, please," Harry asked, exasperated.

"Alright, then. We'll circle back to this—"

"—oh, joy—" muttered Harry.

"—in the meantime," Malfoy spoke over Harry as though he'd never been interrupted, still perusing the menu rather than look at him, "maybe you could enlighten me as to why you were at my hearing on Friday?"

"I, er. I wasn't at your hearing." Harry suppressed the urge to scratch, carefully folding his hands instead. Draco flicked a look at him. It was clear that he saw right through him.

"Bullshit. Don't play coy now, Potter. You were right there when I was leaving."

"Okay, well, I was visiting Hermione—"

"Granger doesn't work on that floor, don't give me this," he dropped the menu on the table, fixing Harry with a stare. "Is it that you're desperate to get involved in business that isn't your own because you're obsessed with being the saviour of everything?"

Harry ran a hand nervously through his hair. Damn if he couldn't keep his traitorous hands still for one moment. 

"Okay, fine. I was bored, and I saw the notice of your hearing, and it was convenient to, y'know, _swing by_ , and I—yes, I admit I was sticking my nose where it didn't belong and—"

"So you admit it," Malfoy interrupted him.

"Admit what?"

"That you're obsessed with me."

Harry's heart skipped a beat. 

"I—I am not obsessed with you. Gods, you are the most annoying—"

"You said the words 'obsessed with you' right there, for the record," Malfoy smirked at him, a sea of teeth. "That's all I wanted."

"There was a 'not' in front of it."

"Don't care." The smirk had a life of its own now. He had Harry off-kilter, just where he liked him. "Now, back to the fidgeting. You must do something with all that pent up, _I'm the saviour of a world that doesn't need saving any longer_ —"

"Flying," Harry spat the answer without thinking as Malfoy raised a hand in a casual signal for a server to take his order, which the woman hovering behind a nearby fern was only too grateful to immediately take.

Harry watched this interaction as the flame of embarrassment burned a hole through him. He had ordered at the front counter like an imbecile, he now realized. He'd ordered hot coffee too—twice—even though the temperature was set to sizzle eggs on tarmac today. Perhaps, he mused, he subconsciously wanted to spend time with Malfoy to learn how it was that he moved through the world so casually. To pick up on that suaveness forever missing from Harry's life, like a lesson he'd missed.

Malfoy ordered an iced drink with a small smile of thanks that lit up the server's entire face. 

He barely looked at Harry and certainly didn't smile at him like that. 

Harry's grip on his mug tightened.

"Flying, that's what I used to do, at least. Before," he sighed heavily, "before it became too much of a hassle to bother trying."

He glanced up from the dregs of his cup to Malfoy, who was squinting at him again.

"What, flying with the masses is beneath you now?"

"That's not it."

"You're scowling."

"Am not. Keep squinting like that, and you'll give yourself wrinkles," Harry said, looking up, locking eyes with him. A stare with Malfoy always felt like a challenge.

"Are too. Is this line of enquiry poking some sort of open wound for you? Shall I stop?"

Harry broke the stare because his pulse started racing. Too much caffeine, he thought, pushing the mug away. Why was it always such a struggle to think clearly when Malfoy was looking at him? It was like he was looking through him, somehow. Distinctly unsettling. Why'd he have to spend so much time looking Harry directly in the eyes? 

"No, it's nothing. It—if I go somewhere Muggle, I've got to be careful that they don't pick me up on radar. I try and avoid the press, so half the time I end up so high that I freeze right through warming charms." The words burst forth, all the annoyance and anger he never had anyone to complain to about launching out of him in a word vomit stream. "The Quidditch pitches, well, don't even get me started. They're more trouble than it's worth with all the security these days, not to mention there's a mole in the fucking Department of Transportation which they _refuse_ to take seriously, which is utter shite on their part, railing on about health and safety all bloody day, and yet my location goes to the highest bidder. Can't go in under the cloak or Polyjuice or a glamour and, I—I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I don't get out as often as I'd like, is all," he finished lamely.

Malfoy's face was impassive at surface level, but Harry's outburst was clearly like Christmas come early for him.

"Your invisibility cloak? That is what you mean by 'the cloak,' yes?"

"That's what you're focusing on, out of all that?" Harry asked incredulously. Malfoy nodded. " _Yes_ , my invisibility cloak."

Malfoy's previously impassive face opened up into a wide grin that showcased his perfect teeth and forced tiny wrinkles into his eyes' corners. It was like a sunbeam lit him from behind, and Harry could feel his own scowl soften in its glow.

"I fucking _knew_ it. All those years, you sneaking about," Malfoy said.

His order arrived. He thanked the server, all polite posh attention, and then plucked up a blue striped straw from a cup on the table and popped it in, taking a sip through that fucking smile. Harry shook his head in incredulity. Everything about this was weird. Malfoy had a plastic straw between his lips. They weren't fighting. He was smiling. At Harry.

"Yes, well, the rumours are true." Harry pulled off his glasses to wipe the smudges from them with the hem of his shirt. Jesus, but he was nervy—damn that second coffee. "Congratulations, you were right."

Malfoy put down his drink and spread his palms flat on the table. His eyelids slid shut as his head dropped back to reveal the length of his long, pale throat. 

"This is me, pre-orgasmic, for your information," he purred his words and made a tiny sound, like the crest of a wave of pure desire, barely catching himself before he spilled past the point of no return. Harry watched his Adam's apple bob with it before he snapped his face forward, eyes twinkling with mischief. "I couldn't tell you how long I've been waiting to hear you say that."

"Say what?" Harry asked, throat tight.

Malfoy leaned in, his scent filling Harry's brain. "That I'm right," he said, voice dusky. 

Harry swallowed, mouth parched, and distantly thought that he had never been more glad to be seated at a table as he was now. It must have been too long since he last pulled because the words _pre-orgasmic_ and Malfoy's salacious little show had got him half hard in three seconds flat. Unlike the times this happened as a teen, he lacked robes' convenience to hide the obvious tenting in his pants. He slouched lower into his chair, causing his knees to accidentally brush Malfoy's under the table. The feeling was like an electric shock. He repositioned himself again, placing clammy hands on the tabletop. 

Fuck everything. He was sweaty, nervous, and now had to hide a hard-on under a table. 

"Anyway, enough of that," Malfoy said, a soft smile on his lips, pupils pulsing when he fixed Harry with pale grey eyes. Harry remembered to slam his Occlumens more deeply into place, trying not to telegraph his awkward situation. "It's not kind to gloat now, is it?" 

He sipped his drink, and he must be doing it on purpose, Harry thought. The way he grazed his teeth over the tip of the straw before he pursed his lips to suck, only he couldn't be, this wasn't _flirting;_ there was no way of that. Harry's imagination supplied thoughts of teeth and lips, and that pink mouth sucking around much more than a straw. 

Harry dragged his eyes away by force because god-fucking-damn-it-all since when could Draco Malfoy get him hard. How desperate was he? How had he let himself become so lonely?

When Malfoy put down the drink and steepled his hands in front of him, Harry took a deep, steadying breath and slid his under the table—the sight of Malfoy's manicured nails made his stubs seem especially unsightly. He vowed to ask Hermione what the name of the potion for nail-biting she was always recommending was next time he saw her, and he tried to think about nothing, turn his mind blank to will his cock into submission. 

Malfoy sucked in a deep breath, steeling himself for something. "So," he said, "how are you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Don't make me repeat it, Potter." Malfoy's face drooped with impertinence. "Since your interview came out, how, you know—are things?"

"Oh. Er," Harry stared, stunned.

"Come on; it's not that difficult a question. I'll let you get away with saying 'good' instead of 'well' if you'd just finish your bloody sentence."

Harry shook his head to clear it. "I'm, um, I'm alright." Malfoy raised his brows as though to say, _Was that so difficult?_ Harry relaxed a bit, pushed his fingers up under his glasses into his closed eyes. 

"I mean, I'm not great." He sighed, letting his glasses fall back into place, blinking around the black stars in his vision. "That Skeeter managed to sneak the word 'predatory' into the same sentence about me being on the Hogwarts Board of Governors in her bit this morning is pretty much par for the course with her. I'm not surprised." He ran a hand nervously through his hair, Malfoy watching him with a precise kind of interest. "I assume I'll incite some conservative panic that my fancying cock is due to—"

"—pathological unresolved trauma, leading to a life of unsatisfying and vile relationships, doomed to end in depraved agony?"

Harry snorted.

"Nicely done," he said and gave a few slow claps. "You would do well in journalism, you know."

Malfoy smiled, biting his lip demurely, and Harry was genuinely stunned. Fuck, but he had such a rare, sunny smile.

"Anyway, I'm okay so far, though. Haven't had to face some of the people who didn't know yet, so 'okay' is apt to change."

"Not very Gryffindor of you," Malfoy said. He was either very bad at hiding his curiosity or wasn't trying to any longer. 

"I'm not always as brave as people might like to think," Harry said carefully. "Ask me again in a week."

"Are you always up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday? Don't you ever go out?" The question was asked casually, and then, as though he remembered that he had to say something rude, Malfoy added, "You've got enough time to, what with your unemployment."

"To clubs and the like?"

Malfoy nodded. Harry frowned, not sure how to answer. "I'm not really a big fan of nightlife, to be honest."

"What are you, like, allergic to fun?" Malfoy tucked a lock of errant hair behind his ear, and Harry's eyes followed the movement. His hair looked so soft, wispy. Harry wondered what it felt like to touch. 

"Crowds make me anxious."

He must be slipping, losing his grip to be telling truths to Malfoy that he rarely admitted to himself. Malfoy pursed his lips. 

"Interesting. What were you doing at Gollybean, then?"

"That was staged." Harry rolled his shoulders back, forced himself to sit up straight in his chair. Malfoy did so elegantly, as though it were the easiest thing in the world. Harry wondered where he got the core strength or discipline to manage it. "By which I mean, my PR manager made me go."

"You had to be forced out to the bar, alone, for your own birthday?"

"I guess. Welcome to my life. Exciting, I know," Harry said dryly. 

"Do you date?" Malfoy played with his straw, pointedly not looking at Harry anymore. Harry was thankful for this small mercy because he knew that he was doing a piss-poor job hiding his shock.

"Uh. Well. No. I don't."

"So you've been single since the Weasley break-up?"

"Basically. I wouldn't know where to start." Words kept tumbling out of Harry's mouth without his permission. "It's not fair to Muggles, to keep magic from them."

Malfoy made a sound of understanding. Harry squinted at him, confused. "What would you know about dating Muggles?"

"Dating is a strong word," Malfoy said quickly. The implications made Harry's stomach flop. 

"What would you know about shagging Muggles, then?"

Malfoy shrugged, dragged his tongue across his lower lip. "More than you, I'd wager."

The weird feeling in Harry's stomach crept lower as his attention was held by Malfoy's mouth, the wide cupid's bow at the top, pouty bottom lip below. Christ, he had a mouth that Harry wanted to do so very many things to.

"Cryptic, much?" Harry said, looking away, afraid of what emotions were likely being telecast by his face. "Anyway, I can't just. You know. Date. Wizards."

"Correction: couldn't. You couldn't before, without the chance of being outed. You can now." 

When Harry looked at him again, his palms were wet with sweat. He swallowed thickly.

"I suppose I could now," he said slowly. "It's kind of hard to meet people."

Malfoy sighed dramatically. "Oh, I'm sure you could find some lovely bloke or ten who wants nothing more than to spend all his time with you while you do your lonely push-ups or stare morosely into the distance or whatever it is you do all day. I imagine it takes a lot of time for you to contemplate another year of being the most beloved troglodyte the Ministry ever rubber-stamped into becoming an Auror, but you could pull if you only put some of that famous Potter-enthusiasm into it."

"Wow."

Harry sat back as Malfoy basked in the thoroughness of his takedown, lips curling into a smirk. 

"Just, wow. I'm coming to you first for an endorsement, next I need one. Do you take contract work? Could you do me up a singles advert? You have this gift with words, you see—"

"Enough of the particulars of your incredibly lacklustre personal life and back to the matter at hand," Malfoy interrupted, his face tight from trying to hide a smile. "Have you tried running?"

"Excuse me?"

"Running," Malfoy repeated flatly. 

"Running?"

"Honestly, you give me a hard time for being difficult to speak to, and all the while you could be Echo reincarnate, yes, running, the activity by which—"

"—I know how _running_ works, Malfoy—"

"If you know so much, then why do you feel the need to repeat what I say?"

"It's only because you're always saying surprising things," Harry blurted. Malfoy's eyes widened. 

"Watch yourself, Potter. That was nearly a compliment," Malfoy said.

Harry attempted to ignore him. "I need a minute to think about it. The image of you in joggers. Never thought I'd see the day."

"You like thinking of me in soft trousers?"

Harry rolled his eyes, even as a blush tickled at the skin of his throat and cheeks. Malfoy would be a sight in joggers, wouldn't he? He had a pert little arse, and Harry could quite easily imagine the line of his—

"Well," Malfoy added with an insouciant shrug, pulling Harry from his impolite reverie, "you probably never will."

"Oh, are joggers beneath you?"

"No," Malfoy's perfect eye-roll came out, and Harry caught himself happy to see it. He clearly hadn't grown out of getting off on riling Malfoy up.

"I prefer to take my exercise the same way French women do." Malfoy shared a knowing look with Harry before he dropped his voice down and leaned across the table to whisper. 

"You know. In secret."

Harry stared openly for a moment at his impassive, solemn face before snorting with laughter.

"What are you on, honestly? In secret? What does that mean—"

"Listen, you oaf. French women have this awful pressure to always butter their baguette, and make an incredible duck confit with heaps of rendered fat _and_ be seen eating it, and all the while looking fantastic in Chanel and casually fitting into their daughter's denim, you know—"

"I don't, but please do go on." Harry didn't realize it, but he had leaned into the table much the same way Malfoy had, mirroring his excited posture.

"Yes, so, they have this secret. It was not that they don't get fat; it's that they go to the Muggle gymnasium, but they do it totally incognito. If you let it be known that you're working for your body in France, you may as well not have it at all."

"That's so confusing."

"I think it's _brilliant._ " Malfoy's face was alight, and it did things to Harry. He felt hot, ears burning. At least his erection had started to fade. 

It was the caffeine; definitely the caffeine, he thought, even as his eyes flicked from pale grey ones to pink lips and back again. Malfoy had really excellent lips, a full bottom one that he could perfectly imagine suck—

"It keeps the mystery alive." Malfoy's words interrupted Harry's thoughts. This whole meeting thing was a terrible idea. Harry couldn't believe this was the second time he'd zoned out in two days while Malfoy was talking because he was _staring at Malfoy_. 

"You get all dressed up like you've somewhere important to be," Malfoy kept talking animatedly, utterly unaware of Harry internally falling apart. "Find a Muggle part of town with a gymnasium, though Hyde Park is actually quite nice in the mornings, anywhere will do. You Apparate there, change into the joggers that nobody knows you own—"

"No, of course not," Harry intoned in a sombre voice. Malfoy bit his lip and nodded, his eyes glimmering.

"—and you're off. It's as a good a workout as flying, I'd say, and gives about the same feeling. You get to be alone, moving through the world, and just—"

"Free." Harry finished the sentence, and Malfoy snapped back to himself, the smile fading slightly. He tucked a strand of hair that'd fallen loose from his little ponytail back behind his ear.

"Exactly. Free." 

He worried his lip and looked into his cup, sucking up the last sip. "Now, you have a little dirt on me that you can share with your horrible Gryffindor friends."

"I'm not going to tell Ron and Hermione about you." 

"Oh," Malfoy said, surprised. 

The words had slipped out of Harry's mouth before he could ascertain their weight. He saw the moment that they hit Malfoy, the way his casually open posture clenched. He witnessed the light behind his face going out. For a moment, before the mask came down, the look of hurt.

Malfoy pulled his hands back into the cuffs of his shirt and crossed his arms across his chest.

"No, I'm sorry. That came out wrong."

"Don't apologize. I'm quite accustomed to being a dirty secret." Malfoy's tone was flat, and Harry really shouldn't care, why should he, this was _Malfoy_ , but it didn't feel right. They hadn't been cruel with each other, not today, not any of the last few times they'd seen each other. This wasn't how the conversation was supposed to go. 

"Sometimes, I just say things. You're not a dirty secret, let me—"

When Draco looked back up, his practiced scowl was in place.

"What part of _I won't tell my real friends about you_ wouldn't be construed by the average person that he is, indeed, a secret? Dirty or otherwise?" 

Harry desperately wanted to go back to minutes before, to sunny smiles and shared jokes. He screwed his eyes shut and rushed his answer out as quickly as possible to defuse the bomb of Malfoy's anger before it blew everything up.

"Listen, Draco, every part of my life is public knowledge and always has been. The average person in our world knows my birthday, and my favourite dessert and whether I spent Christmas alone, and Ron and Hermione know me inside-out, and this is the first time in a very long time that I've had a part of my life that's my own. And maybe I don't want to share it yet."

Harry screwed up the courage to open one eye and peek. Malfoy remained seated, which was a positive sign. Harry barrelled through, barely sure where the next word would take him. 

"And it's weird, yeah, us even talking to each other? You're you, and I'm me, and I can't tell if you even like my being around most of the time."

Malfoy tilted his head. 

"Go on," he said. 

Harry blew out a breath and decided to go for broke.

"Er. It would be nice to have someone to talk to about—oh, fuck it—about blokes and stuff, and I—maybe it's stupid, and maybe I'm making a huge mistake, but I feel like I can trust you now."

Harry burned with a blush that might never die down. He kept talking while Malfoy watched, indifferent. 

"You didn't tell anyone about what happened on my birthday, and that's big, for me. To meet," Malfoy raised an eyebrow at the word, and Harry backtracked, flustered, "well not _meet_ , but you know what I mean, I don't know many people who don't care about who I am or what I do or who I shag—"

"You think that I don't care?" Malfoy asked. For once, he seemed genuinely asking, not putting on a show. 

"Fuck that. I love that you don't care. You've never been one to treat me like I'm someone special."

Malfoy snorted, which gave Harry the heart to continue. 

"Well, I mean, you did, but only because you were such an enormous prick about it. But you don't seem like that prick anymore, and I don't want to share hanging out with you with everyone yet. Because it'll be a whole—"

"Thing?" Malfoy offered the word. 

"Yeah, exactly, a whole thing and I, I think for whatever reason, I like this. I think I would like this to continue, erm, very much."

Malfoy continued to stare. For Harry's part, the silence between them stretched far too long. He'd opened a door, and as much as it scared him, he had no choice but to stand in the chilly wind of Malfoy's hurt and wait for him to make his move.

"You do recall the last time we saw each other it ended in screaming, right?"

"Yeah?" Harry said, confused. "But it didn't, you know, hurt my feelings or anything. You love screaming. I've noticed you Slytherins tend towards a, um—let's call it a flair for the dramatic."

A muscle twitched in Malfoy's face. "First off, rude."

"I mean, Snape? That fucking thing he did with his cloak when he left a room?"

Harry watched as Malfoy struggled not to laugh, which would be conceding the point. "Second, you like that? Fighting?"

Harry's face scrunched up in disbelief. "This doesn't count. This is—it's play fighting, what we do. I've done enough real fighting to last a lifetime, and I think you have too."

"And what is this, then? To you."

"Er. Talking?"

Malfoy rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Of course. Talking."

The blank stare was beginning to scare Harry, but then he finally cracked a devious smile. 

"It's Draco now, is it?"

Harry groaned so loudly that an elderly woman at the table across from them turned fully around to give him a stink eye, but he could not begin to care about manners. Not now, not when his heartbeat was thumping so loudly that it felt like the entire cafe must be able to hear it too. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so on edge, never mind the last time he'd been at this stage of a new friendship with a person—more years than he cared to remember.

"How is it that you always manage to choose the weirdest parts of what I say to focus on? I'll call you Malfoy if you like. It just slipped out."

"No, I like it. I'd prefer you to call me Draco. That's—" Malfoy paused, head bobbing left and right, weighing his next words, "—friendly. I understand what you mean, I think. About having something that's only yours."

"Er, uh. Okay." 

Harry wiped clammy hands against his thighs. If he thought about it, this entire situation was eerily similar to how he had a tendency to blurt the absolute wrong thing at anyone he fancied and the terrible, awkward feeling that followed those admissions. There wasn't a point in continuing to compare the two scenarios, though. This had nothing to do with that. 

"Well, as much as I'd love to stay and continue to explain other basics of adult life to you, I've got to be off. Maybe next time I'll teach you how to dress without wearing Velcro shoes. Oh, or the complexities of getting a proper haircut. Perhaps this is how I pay you back."

"What, warning me off of the sartorial faux-pas of Velcro shoes that I don't even own?"

Malfoy smirked into his shirt. He really had a great smile, teeth white and neat as little gravestones all in a line. And that canine, the little snaggletooth in charge of the seductive lip-biting. How had Harry never noticed what a lovely smile Malfoy had before? Or, Draco. What a lovely smile _Draco_ had? It wouldn't hurt to have a friend that also happened to be fit. Perhaps he could be Harry's wingman—the thought was, on its face, terrifying, but it couldn't hurt to try, could it?

"Something like that. But until then, I've got work to do. We can't all spend our days lazing about being famous now, can we, Potter?"

Harry crossed his arms, playfully annoyed. Malfoy was still richer than the dirt Gringotts was built on, whether he was speaking to his father or not. Harry was confident that Narcissa Malfoy wouldn't keep anything from her son, whether he had carte blanche access to the family lines of credit or not. But he was clearly intent on doing things his way these days, sticking to the part of the reformed student, newly on his own, pretending his way through being independently wealthy and not a leach of the state like Harry. Frankly, Harry was intent on playing along if it meant their fragile truce could stand. 

It was insane. 

It felt brilliant. 

Malfoy stood, sweeping up his jacket. He looked down at Harry, who, for his part, remained frozen to his chair. It was a moment that could quickly grow awkward—did he stand to hug him goodbye? Did they shake hands?

"Who told you what Velcro is anyway?" Harry covered for the awkwardness of the moment by babbling. "Just so I can, you know, go back in time and strangle them to death. I can tell you're going to be terribly annoying about it."

Malfoy licked his lips, said, "I told you before, I've done a lot of growing up. Of course I know what Velcro is. Clever, Muggles, aren't they?" 

He clipped his gloves on as he watched a mother pushing a pram pass by the windows. It gave Harry enough time to blink in wonder at the person before him. He looked like Draco Malfoy, Harry thought. He walked and talked just like him. But this person seemed in some ways a million miles away from Draco Malfoy, Boyhood Nemesis. In some ways, Harry felt like he might be meeting this Draco Malfoy for the first time.

"Consider it a public service that I've warned you off wearing those shoes, I can tell you would without guidance, and yes, it's still Potter for you," he said. 

"If you want me to call you Harry, you'll have to earn it. If you want to see me, send a bloody owl, like a normal person. This coffee's on you, by the way, strictly because you're still annoying. Have a good day, Potter." 

With a brisk nod, he turned and walked from the café, disappearing into the crowds of a new day breaking in London. 

* * *

Walking through Harrods later than afternoon, Harry replayed this parting moment in his mind. As he collected armfuls of darkly coloured hooded sweatshirts and joggers in various stretchy and fleeced and waterproof varieties, he turned the newest word in his vocabulary over and over again like a smooth pebble in his mouth.

"Draco," he whispered to himself, butterflies alighting in his stomach. He hadn't felt like this since sixth year.

_"And what is this, then? To you."_

" _Dra_ -co. Dra- _co_." 

Yes, he remembered this feeling. That last match, when Gryffindor had won the cup. That moment not when he'd kissed Ginny, but when he'd realized that Ron wouldn't raise a stink about it. The last time he'd felt happiness without worry for a long, long time after that. 

_"It's Draco now, is it?"_

"Draco," he breathed.

He caught sight of himself in a mirror looking moony and realized what he was doing, saying, thinking. He stopped dead in his tracks. This went a lot further than taking some advice and going shopping; what he felt had a name; and what was going on was so very, very far from _talking_. 

"Fuck."

* * *

 **Notes:** Woo! I do love Harry having a revelation about how Clearly Obsessed He Is With Malfoy, and hope you do too.

Continued thanks for the kudos and comments—they keep me going! I'll have some more time on my hands in the coming week and hope to post the next two chapters in quick succession. **Chapter 6 & 7 should be coming your way by Oct 4.**

**xo minta**


	6. Lunch in the Loos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get heated in the streets by day and a pub loo by night.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Gay bashing

* * *

  
**Tuesday, September 9, 2003**

His thumb was full in his mouth before the taste hit, and Harry had to hold back the urge vomit. He removed the digit gingerly, grimacing his way through one last smile and hand-wave to the witch departing the restaurant. As soon as her bodyguard opened the door and she turned away, Harry dropped into his chair and gulped at the glass of water before him as though nothing would ever slake his thirst. Finishing it only to find that the explosion of a foul taste in his mouth had not been washed away, he stuffed a leftover roll into his mouth, and then, desperate, another.

He was doing his best to hide the soft retches tugging at his throat when he heard it.

"Potter, is that you?"

Harry froze, mid-retch, still facing the restaurant wall. 

"Are you quite alright?"

Even with a long line of horrifyingly embarrassing memories behind him, Harry knew that this might be a new low. He chewed for what felt like minutes, swallowing an unearthly amount of bread paste before directing an answer towards his shoes.

"Can we pretend for a second it's not?" he asked. "So that I could, uh, transfigure myself into the carpet?"

"What on earth are you doing? I expected a hairball at the rate you were going."

Having finally gotten a hold of himself, Harry turned to meet the body that matched the voice. The voice he'd been fantasizing about, the voice that used to grate his nerves and was now the one he desperately wanted to growl into his ear.

"It's this nail-biting repellant I'm trying," he said.

Harry gathered the strength to look into Draco's face as the wrinkle of confusion on his brow gave way to amusement.

"I take it that it's not doing its job very well if it's ended up in your mouth," he said, a wry smile starting on his lips.

Harry's face contorted at the thought. "It's working only too well, actually. I'd forgotten that I had it on."

Draco walked the few steps over to where Harry was seated and dropped his paper sack of takeaway on to the table. He managed to blend into and stick out from the near-empty Muggle restaurant; his white polo shirt and jeans were a look that could be found on any street corner in London. It was something else that marked him out. 

_You're doing it again_ , he realized, staring far too openly. Harry dragged his attention across the sparse crowd of regulars sitting at the other tables. He had to get a hold of himself.

The restaurant itself was ancient. Thick carpets muffled the conversations taking place; the wood trim of the walls and doors was dull with years of use and wax; the roses in the vases held a faint layer of dust upon their petals, burning forever fire-engine red and laden with beads of plastic dew. Even the fish in the tank behind the counter swum lazily. Everything felt perched in amber; the patrons themselves were mostly pensioners and people old enough to be their parents. 

And there was Draco, staggeringly bright and youthful in comparison, holding out a hand to Harry as the other tucked loose strands of hair behind his ear, asking, "Can I see?"

Harry splayed his fingers in front of himself and sighed.

"They're not nearly up to being judged yet, let alone by a Malfoy," he said. He gave in against his better judgement and rested the pads of his fingertips on Draco's outstretched palm.

His heart rate spiked, even though he was only touching the fawn-coloured leather of driving gloves. He wished it wouldn't do that. 

Draco seemed totally unaware of the turmoil this touch generated in Harry's body as he leaned in and Merlin, but he smelled incredible. Harry could bury his face in Draco's hair and never tire of that smell. Almonds and orange oil? Did he cologne his hair in the morning, the better to intoxicate lonely men like Harry?

Draco dropped his hands and stood straight again, smirking. "Not quite so disgusting as the last time I saw you. A five out of ten, and that's with an extra point thrown in for the effort."

Harry pulled back, faux-affronted. "You thought they were disgusting last I saw you?"

Draco's smirk didn't falter. "I think they're disgusting now, but I appreciate a man trying to better himself." 

He dropped into the chair next to Harry, elbow perched on the tabletop to rest the sharp line of his jaw in his hand.

"Also, I'm glad to have some concrete evidence that you're actually gay finally," he said lightly.

Harry frowned in confusion. "What do you even _mean_ by that?"

"Someone clearly wasn't bullied enough at school. And here I thought I'd done a decent job of it."

Harry spluttered as Draco held his hands in front of him as Harry had to mock-inspect them.

"This is how you check your nails if you're gay," he said before turning them around so that the palms faced him as he made soft fists. "This is how you check your nails if you're straight." He gave his head a little shake, eyes raised to the ceiling, looking for all the world incredibly vexed. "I suppose the children who invented this test were yet to grasp the full spectrum of sexualities. They didn't include any other groups in their foolproof test-method, but there you have it. How's a bi-sexual person meant to do it, for example?"

"Did you get asked that back in school?" Harry asked.

"No, that would have been before Hogwarts," Draco said. He smiled absently. "It's actually quite a good story."

"A good story?" Harry asked. "You? Being bullied?"

"Yes. It was the first time I vanished a full set of robes. Not an unimpressive task to vanish them directly off of a person when you're six years old."

He leaned back, eyes sparkling with remembered mischief. "I'd tell you whose, too, but I've got to be off. Back to work." Draco said this without making any intimation of leaving, eyes travelling up and down Harry's body in the space of a second. 

"I'll walk with you," Harry blurted, heart in his throat. Had he imagined that look? Was it in the judgement of his outfit or...more?

Draco looked surprised, and Harry realized he had gone and done it again, saying things without thinking them through and inviting himself where he was not meant to go.

"I mean, I'm already going that way. If it's not trouble?" He cleared his throat, realizing the waitress was watching them with an overly amused look on her face from across the room. He must be radiating awkwardness. 

"I've got to stop by the Portkey office before they close for the afternoon anyway; it's just you, know—on the way."

"Sure you do," Draco answered breezily. "Let's go then." He collected his bag and led the way out of the restaurant, holding the door for Harry as they stepped into the blazing late-summer sunshine. 

"So," Draco started, "have you been keeping busy?"

Harry wondered if this was some sort of dig for having not reached out to him since they'd last spoken at the café. Luckily, honesty was on his side.

"Actually, yeah. My manager had me in meetings for all sorts, and I've been doing a lot of writing." Draco gave him a look, incredulous. Harry shrugged. "It's with a Quick-Quotes, and then I ship it off to an actual writer, who basically razes it to the ground and writes it back up again but, yeah. Busy."

"Confronted any of those folks that you hadn't come out to yet?"

Harry's stomach constricted at the thought. He'd been studiously ignoring the brief letter from Ginny telling him he had to come back that Sunday for dinner, or Molly and Arthur would disown him, and her for not doing a good enough job in wrangling him. He'd been remiss not to tell them in the first place, knew it was cowardice to continue hiding out from them for so long.

"Getting around to it," he hedged. Draco made a knowing sound and didn't press further, which Harry was grateful for. 

"Well," Draco said after they'd walked in comfortable silence for a half-block, "are you going to tell me what brought you and the third-richest witch in Scotland to that hole in the wall, or are you going to make me guess?"

"Who, Nova?" Harry asked. Draco slipped on a pair of sunglasses and scoffed. He looked healthier than last Harry'd seen him, but perhaps it was just a side effect of being outside, in daylight. There was a peachy look to him, and his hair glowed flaxen instead of bone-white.

"Of course you're on a first-name basis with Nova Newts."

Harry scratched at the base of his neck, deciding to keep his gaze resolutely forwards as much as possible. It was a short walk back to the Ministry, but he was already cursing himself for suggesting they walk together. The streets weren't busy; most people in the neighbourhood were back to work in the offices surrounding them. Heat poured off the pavement, driving those who would linger back into air-conditioned shops or the shade of the nearby tree-lined parks. Draco moved at a leisurely pace. It felt too easy, as though they were friends running into each other. 

_Or more than friends_ , Harry's brain helpfully supplied. He had to grit his teeth and banish the thought. He was sure that at any moment, Draco would catch on to his ulterior motives and tell him off.

"She uh, well, Nimbus Corp, they're offering me an endorsement deal," Harry broke his newly made rule immediately, looking to Draco for a reaction. Getting none, he continued, "I don't think I'm going to take it."

"Why not? Are you allergic to money or something?" 

"Well, it's basically becoming the face of the company, and I don't play Quidditch professionally, you know? Who am I to endorse brooms? And I'm shite at events. Honestly, they may as well get Krum up there for all I'm good at public speaking." 

At this, Draco laughed properly. 

"Are you laughing at me or with me?"

"Well, you're not laughing," Draco said. And it was dangerous and stupid, so colossally stupid what this teasing did to Harry. 

"Thanks a mil for that." He looked down and forced himself to keep from grinning. "Anyway, half of the job is getting your picture taken, and if they wanted a model, they should well hire one. I could go on, but long story short, I'm not the man for the job."

"A lifetime supply of free brooms is nothing to sneeze at," Draco said. He sidestepped a group of teens, his shoulder brushing Harry's, setting a shiver running down his spine. Maybe these little touches were on purpose? If he could find a way to bump into Draco, would he pull away?

"They already send me brooms," Harry said, and Draco laughed again.

"So take some pictures with them, come on! You're not half-bad at it."

Something inside Harry roiled, a warm feeling spreading in his chest at Draco's words. 

"Not half-bad at getting my picture taken, or on a broom?"

"No comment," Draco said lightly. "I won't abide you fishing for compliments, Potter. I don't hand them out like candy. All I'll say is, even I won't pretend you look shite on a broom." Harry's heart swelled. He stopped, and Draco paused to face him on a quiet bit of the street.

"Really?" Harry asked.

"Yes, Potter, really. Merlin, it's one of the few things you're naturally good at. You were my only real competition as a Seeker, and we both know it."

"You said you weren't handing out compliments today," Harry teased. He held his hands behind him and rocked back on his heels, knowing full well that the pose pulled his t-shirt tight across his shoulders and chest. He felt up, buoyant, even, seeing Draco. He wished he could bottle the high of this feeling and keep it with him, take a swig when he needed the courage to pen an owl inviting him for a coffee. Couldn't it be so simple? 

Draco let out a puff of air. "Don't be a pest. I'm serious. You could donate the money or invest it or whatever it is you want to do. Don't take it on as an endorsement if you don't want the full weight of it. Bargain them down to what you're comfortable with and take it from there."

It was so bright that Harry had to squint to see. He cupped his hands to make a cap-brim over his eyes.

"That's smart."

"I'm a lot of things, but dull isn't one of them."

"Why were you in that restaurant?" The question came tumbling out. Draco crossed his arms, his shirtsleeves riding up to reveal an expanse of his burn. Harry felt sure that Draco's nonchalance in attire around him, the way he held himself, promised something. A certain friendliness was growing. It couldn't all be Harry's imagination. Or it could be, and he'd act on it, and it would all fall apart, what was he even thinking—

"You may have forgotten since your departure, but the Ministry's canteen leaves a lot to be wanted for. That, and Roger's makes the best ziti in Westminster."

"Bit of a dump, though?" Harry said. Draco bit his lip, caught between a scowl and a smile.

"You think I'm too posh for takeaway, is that it?"

Harry angled a tight smile at his shoes. He wasn't supposed to be looking at Draco's face, damn it all.

"That's not it at all—"

"If you think it's such a dump," Draco cut Harry off, "it begs the question why the great and powerful Harry Potter thought it fit to bring Nova Newts, heiress and chief executive officer of the Nimbus Corporation, to a place that sells cones of stracciatella for a quid?"

Harry couldn't wipe the smile off his face, try as he might. He continued to address his shoes, feeling every bit the giggling school-boy. "Hermione brought me once. Said that Ministry staff don't know about it, and it really was some of the best ziti I'd ever had. What's your excuse?"

"She's got good taste, that Granger. For a suit," Draco responded.

"You do know that makes you a suit too, now you work there?"

"I'll never be a suit, dearest Potter," Draco sniffed. "I'm the Malfoy heir, first and foremost. This apprenticeship is a lily pad I've got to hop on, on my way to great fame and greater fortune. Now, I've learned to enjoy a bit of takeaway in my office, considering that the canteen environment is a little less—"

At that moment, enraptured in the timbre of Draco's voice, Harry felt something at his shoulder. He went to swat at it as Draco's hand darted out and caught his.

"Don't," he said, words clipped. "Just don't."

"Is it bird shite?" Harry turned to inspect the shoulder, tugging at the sleeve to see what had fallen on him, but he was cut off yet again by Draco. "Hold this," he said, shoving the bag of takeaway into Harry's arms as he rushed off the pavement and into the street without a glance backwards.

"Oi!" Draco shouted as he stalked across the street, the objects of his ire two boys, barely at puberty, sniggering and jostling each other into the alleyway.

"You out looking for a bit of a spanking, you two?" Draco called. The boys jogged into the alley, the shorter of the two yelling back at him, "Don't let the fag touch you, Ernie, he'll give you AIDS." 

It was then that Harry snapped into the moment, realizing what had happened. He took off across the street to catch up with them.

Draco was a few steps into the mouth of the alley when Harry came up behind him, while the boys had made it nearly halfway through, toppling empty milk crates and mop buckets propped up against the walls behind them to slow them down. Without a thought, Harry swept his hand in front of him, rage rising like boiling milk frothing over the edges of its pan. The boys' feet came out from under them, and they toppled onto their backs with enough force to wind them. They instinctively curled into balls, groaning on the sticky pavement of the alleyway.

Draco turned on his heel, craning his neck to peer behind Harry for any onlookers and, finding none, turned on him. He closed the distance between them in a few steps. His face was murderous. 

"You can’t use magic on children, Potter!" Draco hissed, "What the fuck are you thinking?"

Harry moved his mouth but couldn't find the words. 

"If you're so into flouting the fucking statute today, do yourself a favour and clean up the gob on your shoulder." Draco turned back to the boys, still fuming. Harry banished the spit from his shoulder with a snap of his fingers. 

He could taste his own anger on the air like static, like pennies in his mouth. Magic rushed over his skin, ready to lash out, and it was up to him to get a hold of himself before he did something he would regret with it. What had he been thinking? Had he thought, at all?

"Don't touch us; we'll have you nicked!" The shorter boy shouted as he struggled to his feet. His companion rolled on the ground, clutching at his head. It had taken most of the brunt of his backwards fall. His hands came away clean, not smeared red. Harry's stomach unclenched slightly. 

"Listen, just because you see a couple of men talking on the street doesn't make them fags," Draco said. "Even if they are, that gives you no right to assault them with your bodily fluids. Do you hear me?"

"Fuck you," the boy said, spitting at the ground before Draco's feet.

"Oh, fuck me?" Draco's ire was up now, his volume rising. "Listen up, you little toad, people out here could be carrying knives for all you know, and you boys don't look up to a knife fight."

"As if a ponce could knife fight," the taller boy said. His face was riddled with pockmarks, reminding Harry strongly of a younger, much more violent Stan Shunpike. 

Draco scoffed, stepping back. "Oh yeah, that's what you think? A ponce can't fight?"

He pulled up his shirt, and Harry could only imagine what tales his torso told.

"That ponce back there cut me up over nothing when we were kids. _Nothing_. For fun, like. What do you think he'd do to you now?"

The shorter one gave a false start at Draco with his fist raised. Draco didn't flinch, and it was then that the other boy grabbed his friend by the arm and pulled at him with a strangled, "No, let's go." 

His voice was high and thin as the incomprehensibility over their having fallen so hard seemed to catch up with him finally. 

"You'd best get out of his sight before he gets properly angry, and don't you ever do something so disgusting again."

They ran off, spewing filth over their shoulders all the while until they rounded the street corner beyond.

Draco's breaths heaved out of him. He lowered his shirt and turned to Harry, vibrating like a leaf tenuously holding on to a branch. He swallowed hard, hands smoothing flyaway hairs back across his skull. 

"What were you thinking, doing magic like that?" he asked. 

"I wasn't," Harry answered. 

"That much is bloody obvious," Draco growled. "You can't just do that."

As he approached Harry, he had to wonder why, if he was going to be slapped or pushed, but all Draco did was pass him and keep walking away.

"I mean, we're not going to get in trouble for it," Harry turned to follow him, struggling to keep up with Draco's long strides.

"Benefits of being Harry Potter and all," Harry attempted a joke.

"Correction," Draco suddenly turned and pushed him into a brick wall with the poke of a single finger. "You won't get in trouble for it because you're you, but me? I'll take the fall just for being here. Do you understand how hungry my boss is to fire me? How much trouble I could land in for not reporting you if we do get caught? What if someone saw you? What if they end up at a hospital and— _Fuck!_ " He turned, holding his head in his hands.

"I won't let them," Harry said. The words sounded childish to his own ears. "Don't worry about it. Report me if you need to. I can go to Ron and talk to him. He could sort it. I'll make sure this won't touch you."

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh, that's rich. I'm not reporting you, you idiot." He looked back towards the alley, and Harry realized that behind the anger was worry. Draco cared about his job, his reputation. He cared a lot more than Harry would have given him credit for only an hour ago. 

"We wouldn't be in this situation if you could control yourself. Weren't you in training to be an Auror? You're not twelve anymore, Potter. Don't you ever think?"

"I said, I'm sorry," Harry said. He felt as though he were grasping at straws. Everything had happened so fast, and now here he was, clearly in the wrong. He didn't like the feeling, especially, of being a disappointment. 

"How did they know? Those kids?" Harry asked.

Draco stared at him in disbelief, eyes wide. "Are you kidding me?" He choked on a hollow laugh. "You're really going to ask how a pair of prepubescent boys could tell we're poofters? Do you actually live under a rock?"

Harry bristled. "I'm not stupid, Draco—"

"Oh, well, thank you for informing me of that because you're doing a great impersonation of it," Draco made to stride off again, but Harry grabbed his wrist before he could. Rather than wrestle out of the grip, Draco stopped and turned to look down at the hand that held him back as Harry loosened his grip and dropped it.

"Look at me, Potter." Harry did, shame burning his cheeks.

"You don't get to touch me like that," Draco spoke quietly, deadly serious. He pulled his sunglasses off and hooked them in the neck of his shirt, and his eyes were shiny, bringing a new feeling to gnaw at Harry: Shame. "I am a person, not a thing, and you will not touch me like that. Not ever."

"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled. He felt sick with himself. Why was he like this? When had he become such a brute? He wasn't fit for other people; give him half a chance, and he'd do something vile. That's what weapons were for, after all.

"I mean it. Don't you ever fucking touch me like that again. Are we understood?"

"I won't. I'm really sorry, Draco," Harry said. His throat felt tight, even if the chances of him crying were zero. "I don't have an excuse."

"We're not at war anymore," Draco stepped away, giving Harry space to breathe again. "Maybe it's time you figured that out."

"No shit," Harry said. He kicked at the pavement with the toe of his trainer, knocking pebbles into the street. 

"As for your question, such as it is; I'm wearing blusher for Merlin's sake, or couldn't you tell?" 

"Really?" Harry asked. Draco gave him a look that could end lives.

"Yes, really. Otherwise, I look like a ghost haunting the streets. Do you think a straight man has enough sense to ask for this haircut? These are this season's fucking Tom Ford sunglasses. You and I, walking together, it's obvious that we're—"

Harry looked up to him, and he cut off, searching Harry's eyes. Like a deer stuck on a busy road, Draco's were wildly looking for a safe place to run. 

"We're what?" Harry asked. His heart's beating picked up, hopeful even when things were grim. 

"Look," Draco held his hands together, as though that could quell their shaking, "you don't have to tell people for them to know. Not teenage boys out looking for a fight, and certainly not the men who taught them how to. We're fun, to them. Hurting us is a sport. You've never been so much as heckled before, have you?"

Draco scoffed when Harry shook his head. 

"Figures, you'd skip that part," he said.

"Does that annoy you? That I haven't had the pleasure of being gay-bashed yet?" Harry asked. The annoyance he had tried to tamp down was winning, his ill-advised temper flaring up.

Draco recoiled, the smooth lines of his face contorting with outrage. "Who the fuck do you take me for? I'm not angry about that, Potter. Christ, count yourself lucky."

He walked a few metres away, taking deep breaths and holding them in as Harry watched. 

"I'm sorry," Harry said, twisting his hands together. A tourist family walked up, sticky-faced toddlers and parents in tennis shoes and keepsake t-shirts from Disneyland Paris. The parents pulled their children into the street, held their hands and spoke in hushed tones as they passed, giving Harry and Draco a wide berth. They must look to passers-by like they were having a domestic, Harry realized. Draco waited until they were out of sight before he spoke again.

"I don't know about you, but for me, from the moment I came out, I could stop putting on the song and dance that straight and straight-acting men everywhere have to telegraph every bloody second of the day." His jaw worked with more unspoken words. "Haven't you felt that?"

Harry had to think about it. "A little," he said. "I haven't said it to some of the people that matter yet, though, to their faces. Or, you know. Held someone's hand in public." Harry looked to his own rough hands, hands he couldn't trust not to inflict pain. Over to Draco's, trembling gone now, covered as they always were in public. Protected from a painful world.

Draco nodded. "Well, you will. It's different for you because you can pass."

"Pass?" Harry asked, confused.

"I mean that the Minister never had to worry about you showing up to work in a dress," Draco answered, his eyes fluttering shut. He seemed exhausted. Harry looked around, scanning the street for an odd set of robes or familiar faces. None were about—they were alone for the moment. Harry turned back to Draco, saddened by the fact that it was he who exhausted him. 

"It's easier for me because I'm mannish?" he asked.

"Masculine, yes." Draco pushed fingertips into his closed eyes. "You're not too femme for those interested in maintaining the status quo to be bothered, at least for as long as they don't have to see photos of you kissing blokes. But for others, it's an act, a big act that they put on."

"Is it an act for you?" Harry asked.

"No," Draco answered softly. "No, I'm all me, all the time." 

He closed the distance between them and leaned his back against the wall next to Harry, gloved hands pressed against the hot brick. 

"Those boys, they're the tip of the iceberg. There are all sorts. The sort who pretend they're not looking to be sucked off in an alley, even if they surely fucking are, and will accept, and then punch you in the face for the pleasure. They pretend that they're not like us, that they wouldn't be caught dead within ten feet of us. They can't, for whatever reason, admit it. They have to make sure that they're not femme at all, as though that's what makes it worse. The moment we stop trying so hard to hide, they know."

He pulled a cigarette from the packet in his back pocket and concentrated on it until it lit. Harry had never seen him do magic like that, from will alone. He was stronger than Harry knew, in a lot of ways. 

"Boys like those boys and men who do much more harm than hocking a gob. Trust me," he heaved a long sigh, "they always know me when they see me."

A hot breeze blew through the street, carrying empty crisps packets and dried leaves from some poorly looking trees past them. When Draco spoke again, he was so quiet that Harry had to strain to hear him. 

"I had a friend once, who ended up with the angry sort. Got tied to a bed for a night." He heaved a sigh, staring at his hands until their trembling lessened. Harry stood with him in the silence, insides a writhing mess. "That sort of thing changes a person. I can't abide by the little offences, because they grow up and become big ones. Scary ones."

Harry couldn't find words, so he mulled over Draco's as he smoked his cigarette.

"I'm sorry," Harry said after a long pause, "about the scars. I never meant to do what I did, but still. I am sorry. I was an arrogant little prick, and I'm sorry."

Draco eyed him through the blue haze of smoke. He looked confused and not any less angry. 

"I don't give two shits about the scars, Potter. That little show was for them, not for you."

"And I'm sorry—"

Draco rolled his eyes, a plume of smoke huffed into the sky. "Oh, please do shut up. I've got to go."

"Your lunch," Harry said feebly, holding out the bag, now deeply crumpled from its journey. 

Draco shook his head, his lips a thin, pinched line. "I'm not hungry anymore."

"Please, just—" Harry held it out so that his knuckles rested against Draco's chest. He was warm through the shirt, and Harry could feel his heartbeat, hard and steady. He didn't pull away.

"I know you're not eating in your office. You're taking lunch in the loos. Take ten minutes and eat in a park. Wherever. Somewhere."

Draco didn't move, but if there was anything he and Harry had in equal measure, it was stubbornness. Harry pressed into him gently.

"I've got to be going, and I'm sorry that I don't think before I do things. I'm an idiot, and I've got to work on it. I've got to work on a lot, to be honest, but I'll try, very hard, to be more careful in the future. If you—If we. If I see you again." 

Draco didn't move. 

"I'm an idiot. Please take the bag back. I can't in good conscience bin all this melted cheese."

"Stop saying you're an idiot, Potter; I already knew that." Draco flicked his cigarette butt to the ground and swiped the bag back at last. 

"How'd you know that I eat in the loos?" he asked, looking at Harry through some of his fringe come loose. He looked younger this way, Harry thought. The austerity of robes made him seem like he was trying to be a mini-Lucius, but he seemed smaller somehow in casual clothes. Delicate, maybe. Harry hated the things this look did to his insides.

"You think I wasn't bullied enough, but you didn't know me back when I went to Muggle school," Harry said. "The majority of my meals were taken in the loo. I had my fair share of children calling me a speccy, poncey git long before you came along." Draco raised an eyebrow at this. 

"Is that so?"

"It is," Harry said. "Also, they don't give new employees offices. Even a dunce like me knows that." Draco shrugged, the closest Harry'd get to having him admit he'd been fibbing. 

"The best you've got is a shared desk in an open office where they've crammed in all the other interns." 

Draco scowled. "I am not an intern, Potter."

"I'm sure your co-workers love that you're twenty-three and working on your _thesis_ , though." 

Draco gave his head a little shake, eyes to the sky. It was a gesture Harry was beginning to recognize as a fond annoyance, a feeling he seemed to have often in Harry's presence.

"The park is much nicer if you've got to eat alone, take it from me," Harry said. "Far fewer conversations to overhear. And, you know. Sounds."

"And smells, I'd gather," Draco added in an undertone. It was Harry's turn to laugh now, even as unease began to creep up on him. They were less than two blocks from the Ministry, and it was a miracle he hadn't been recognized and approached thus far. 

"I've really got to be going," Harry said, glancing down the street to the apparition point he was at least a quarter-hour late to. "Thanks. For putting up with me. I could use seeing more of you, I think."

"Yes, well. It's been no good seeing you, as usual. Let's endeavour never to repeat the situation."

"Can I ask you a question?" Harry said as Draco started to walk off. 

He turned back, brow furrowed. "You just did. Spit it out, won't you?"

"Would you wear a dress to work?" 

A vicious smile crept across his face, all trace of his earlier pain wiped away. He was stunning when he smiled, and Harry's heart pounded faster to see it. 

"Why would I waste a perfectly good dress on those drab drones?" 

Harry watched him walk off and hoped it was to a patch of green in the midday sun. He hoped and hoped and hoped.

* * *

**Friday, September 12, 2003**

Persephone wasn't packed for a Friday night, per se, but there was a healthy queue at the bar, and the last of the comfortable seats were taken on the patio. Harry knew that the tide was turning, and the press of too many crowded bodies in one space would become too much for his tastes within the hour.

But for now, for the moment, he was enjoying himself. Or, he was pretending to enjoy himself. He was _trying_ to enjoy himself, and it was basically working. A traditional pub with modern touches, Persephone's wood-panelled walls and fancifully painted windows of bubbling cauldrons and fire-breathing dragons made it the favoured spot for the Ministry's younger set. It was the go-to for a cheeky midday pint or a late-night bottle of plonk, located only a skip away from headquarters in the heart of Belgravia.

Harry nursed a pint of bitter, feeling warm, full, and a little woozy, only half-listening to Neville and Justin Finch-Fletchley's increasingly loud argument over the Cannons chances this year. Harry was glad to have the distraction of friends after brooding the week away over Draco's words. His words and the warmth of his skin, even through his shirt. Harry took a sip of beer, not nearly cool enough to dampen the flush he felt thinking about that encounter. What had Draco meant about what those boys had seen in the two of them smiling at one another? _It's obvious that we're—_

"Are you going to finish that, Harry?" Luna asked. Empty plates and packets were piled beside her, previously holding warm nuts and prawn cocktail flavoured crisps. Harry pushed his unfinished plate of food towards Luna, as was their usual routine. 

"Where does it all _go_ ," he said absently.

Luna shrugged.

"I would say Bikram yoga, but it's probably the boilgrass shots I've been taking in the mornings. Cleanses the bowels like you wouldn't believe," she said, not noticing Harry's grimace. She was something of a human trashbin and began eagerly picking at the remainder of his battered haddock and minty peas. Dean was meant to join them if he could but was likely to text to say he wouldn't make it—he was smitten with someone new and had entered the nesting phase with his beau. Ron and Hermione were late—as usual—as well as Luna's date, so half of the spots at the table remained empty.

"I'm ready for a fresh round. Should I grab one for the mystery girl?" Justin asked. "She's not gone and stood you up now, has she?" The question was for Luna, but his gaze trailed over to Harry more than once. Justin tastes normally strayed much posher than Harry, but he'd started hanging around more often of late, Harry's marginally rising star drawing him closer into orbit.

Luna shrugged, placid as could be. "She's a bit nervy," she said, pulling up the cascades of blond waves from her shoulders to fan at the back of her neck. "She's also very particular about her lippie. Could be having a difficult time charming it in place," she said, knowingly.

"Could be," Harry agreed. The heat was rising, and he tugged his pullover off, catching sight of two bodies making a beeline for their table as he threw it on an empty chair. He instinctively avoided making eye contact. After a couple of years as a regular at the pub, the thrill of seeing Harry Potter had lost its sheen for most Ministry staff, and those who remained awe-struck were kept back by friends desperate not to seem so uncool as to ask for an autograph. Mostly. But every so often, someone approached, and Harry took the picture or signed the t-shirt (once, a forearm, but that witch had gone and had it made into a tattoo, so he opted for less permanent spots now).

The bodies approached, and the conversation became very suddenly subdued, and then went totally quiet.

"Hullo."

Harry gulped, refusing to look up, knowing full well who stood across from him at the table. Draco's familiar gloved hands curled around the back of one of the empty chairs, indigo denim sleeves of a jacket down to his wrists. Harry looked first to the torso next to Draco and was surprised to recognize Blaise Zabini, looking like he'd walked directly off the runway and into the dimly-lit pub. He was all smooth, dark skin and perfectly edged haircut, a leather moto jacket and a crisp all-black outfit putting the rest of them to sartorial shame.

"Hi," said Luna, and it was then that Harry realized that Draco wasn't even looking at him, hadn't addressed him at all.

"You wouldn't happen to know if Pans were here, would you?" he asked. His eyes flicked over to Harry but didn't linger, looked over in turn to Justin, who sat straight-backed and tight-lipped, and Neville, who steadfastly refused to turn to look at the interlopers.

"Haven't seen her," Luna said. "Though she could be here and Disillusioned, you'd never know."

"Truly," Draco said, a smile curling one side of his lips. He wore a pristine white shirt under his jacket, the first three buttons at his neck undone, revealing a tempting swatch of creamy skin. Harry thought he must be boiling in long-sleeves in weather like this, but other than the dewy cast to his skin, he appeared as composed as could be.

"You're welcome to join us if you'd like," Luna said brightly. Harry caught Neville's eyes growing to the size of saucers, a look their blonde friend blatantly disregarded. "I don't think Ron and Hermione are coming."

Draco smiled wider and dipped his head, brushing away the sweep of hair that fell over one eye. When Draco caught his eye, Harry's mouth went dry as he realized he was staring, and he immediately looked to Luna instead. 

"Thank you, but we don't mean to interrupt. I think Blaise spotted a likely looking table over at the wall," Draco said, which Zabini responded to with a snort and a raised eyebrow. "Point her our way if you do see her if you don't mind."

He pushed off of the chair, nodded at them as a whole. "Longbottom," he said seriously, then looked at Justin and sighed, clearly unimpressed, "Justin."

"Potter," he added aloud, and when he caught Harry's eyes, it took everything in his power to keep a shiver down. The feeling of breath across the back of his neck alerted Harry to Draco's presence in his mind, and Harry scrambled to pull together a coherent thought.

 _I want to apologize,_ cut through the clutter.

 _You want more than that,_ Draco pushed back at him.

He blinked, and then they were off. The sounds of the bar rushed back to Harry, Draco's scent lingering in the air.

"What," Harry said, "was that?" Luna looked around at the table, spearing a bit of fish with a fork and popping it into her mouth.

"What?" she said serenely. "We're cousins," she said.

"Because that explains it," Justin said, huffing an awkward laugh. "Well, I'm getting that round," he added as he got up and melted into the growing crowd. 

"Would help wash that bad taste out my mouth," Neville muttered, half-turned to watch Draco and Zabini across the room just as Ron and Hermione bustled in.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Hermione pulled a face, sweat beading on her brow, "we wouldn't have been late, only—"

"It's fine." Harry waved a hand, gesturing to the open seats.

"What did we miss?" Ron asked, dropping into his chair and immediately inhaling the last piece of fish on Harry's plate. Luna sighed and pushed it towards him to finish up.

"My date's stood me up, and Malfoy and Zabini came over to say hullo, looking very fetching," Luna said. Both Ron and Hermione immediately frowned at Harry. "Oh, and Harry ordered the haddock, and it's delicious this time."

"What?" Harry grumbled. Ron leaned in, exhaling deeply, and Hermione frowned, her mouth twisting just the way it had since she was vexed as a girl.

"What!" Harry exclaimed when his friends continued giving disapproving looks without reason. "I didn't even do anything! I just sat here, good as twiddling my thumbs, and they said hello to _Luna_ , not me."

"He didn't," Neville said to Hermione, "do anything, that is." Harry held his hand up for a hi-five with him as Ron and Hermione sat back, evidently taking Neville's word above Harry's—the wankers.

"No Marauder's Map to be seen tonight," Neville continued. "If he starts going all fifth year on us, you two will be the first to know," he added, tapping a finger to his nose.

"Not bloody funny, Neville," Harry said. He sipped his beer, wondering when in the fuck Justin would be back with more. Jesus, but he felt ruffled—first Draco showing up out of nowhere, taking a look at his thoughts and somehow picking up on what the _more_ Harry was after was, and now this, his friends taking notice and poking fun where fun oughtn't to be had. 

"And to think I thought you had my back," Harry grumbled at Neville. 

"Hmmm," Ron made a displeased noise, scratching at the stubble pushing in at his jaw. Hermione turned and very obviously peered over her shoulder at the Slytherins.

The butterflies in Harry's stomach all stirred at once. He needed everyone's fascination with Draco to end as soon as possible. Now even Draco knew that Harry wasn't only after _talking_ , was after one more button popped, was after a taste of those lips, was after whatever he could get his fumbling, sweating hands on, and he was so completely _fucked_.

"Before everyone forgets, Malfoy _was_ up to something," he grumbled and finished his beer. He wanted to be morose in the comfort of his own home. Perhaps as soon as he could, he would leave and head back, grab a greasy donair and fall asleep on the couch, one hand on his cock, too melancholy to bother to wank properly.

"Yes, we remember," Hermione said wearily. She craned her head before turning hastily back around, a mischievous smile on her face. She and Ron had probably gotten into some happy-hour wine already. He'd ditched his Auror-robes, and she was looking fit and relaxed in a black jersey tank dress and gladiator sandals, gold hoops in her ears. "Ooh, but they are looking rather lush, aren't they?"

"Hey—I'm right here, alright," Ron scoffed, trying and failing to fold his long legs into a comfortable position under the table, kicking Harry multiple times in the process.

"I'm just saying," Hermione said, trailing off. "There must have been something in the water down in the dungeons because those boys came out looking some kind of alright." She flicked her eyes over the men assembled at the table, each of whom had luckily grown out of their awkward, lanky years into more broad-shouldered and well-groomed versions of their teenage selves. "Not saying that Gryffindor tower didn't generate its own share of lookers, either."

"That's more like it," Ron said, stretching across the table to catch a menu with his finger and pull it towards them.

Luna said something that made Neville explode with laughter, and Hermione started poking him to tell her what it was; and as Ron was busy deciding between the haddock and the nachos, it was then Harry chanced a look in Draco's direction, and in a flash, had to look away.

Because Draco was staring right back, clearly waiting for Harry. 

_Follow_. He spoke in Harry's mind as though whispering in his ear. The bastard had a little smile on his face, too, had been waiting for it to happen. Harry cleared his throat, clapped his hands together.

"Change of subject, why don't we try that. You two are late, so I think that calls for shots, for starters." Hermione rolled her eyes but went digging in her purse for her wallet—rules were rules. "And then maybe we can get Ron's perspective on why Halliwell alone won't save the Cannons from Portree."

This was enough to get Neville, Ron, and Luna properly provoked, and Harry sat back, pleased as punch, and didn't mean at all to look up and scan the room for a pair of light grey eyes. But he did, and as his friends argued loudly around him and more drinks were brought, those eyes caught his. And they held, far longer than was typical. They held until Zabini returned from wherever he'd fucked off to, and over the next hour, Harry found he couldn't help himself. He looked when he walked back from the bar with a fresh round levitating before him, looked when he could feel them burning into him, looked when Ron was crying with laughter and wouldn't notice him looking.

And whether it was lucky or not, by the time the sun had set and the pub was packed, and his palms were beginning to sweat from the pressure of being in such a crowd, he looked in time to see Draco mime that he was going for a cigarette to Zabini, two long fingers pressing up against his lips, and get up from their table. And he saw very clearly when he took a left towards the loos when he should have taken a right for the front door, and how purposeful his walk was, even when he didn't look back at Harry once.

Because Harry knew that he was the prey, and he was going to follow Draco's sly stride into whatever dark lair he led him to.

Harry checked his watch and made himself wait. Two minutes. If Draco re-emerged before then, Harry would have been wrong. If he was leaving when Harry entered the room, Harry might be hurt by his barb, but there was plausible deniability if only he could wait. 

Two minutes counted out with taps to his thigh. Two minutes that felt like hours, long seconds that only served to turn Harry's insides to stone. At seven past the hour, precisely two minutes after Draco had walked into the loo, he excused himself from the table, not a head turning to wonder why. 

He walked steadily and entered the toilets, well aware of their layout from previous pub nights. He was three drinks in, buzzed but not yet drunk. Without that liquid courage, he'd have walked straight for the door and sicked up in the street from the stress of it all. 

As it was, he turned to the stalls to his left and kept walking. A young bloke in a Spurs jersey swayed as he washed his hands, blearily staring down at the water rushing over them. White and green tiles were missing where pipes from the line of urinals met the floor, more so as he continued walking. Five stalls, enough that they were never all in use at once, with the lights burnt out over the last two. Harry tucked his chin to his chest as he stepped to the last stall, eyes landing on a pair of well-shined dragon-leather boots. The sound of blood rushing filled his ears, breathing shaky as he steeled himself, summoning courage he didn't feel as he pressed open the door.

Draco leaned against the wall in the near darkness, arms crossed and with a little smirk on his face, as though this were the most natural place in the world to wait for somebody. A single pearl earring studded his right ear, and Harry's breath caught.

He looked stunning, mouth-watering—incredible. 

"This is crazy," Harry breathed. 

Draco didn't say anything, just twitched his head to signal Harry to join him, a quick flick of a gesture that had been made to Harry by other blokes; other blonds, before. Harry stepped inside, the soles of his shoes sticking on the grungy tile, turning away from the original blond in his life to lock the door behind him.

Draco whispered _Muffliato_ and pocketed his wand. 

"So?" he said, arching a brow. "I thought you wanted to apologize."

"I—I do," Harry stammered. He wiped his palms down his thighs, exhaled. "I was a git. I should have known better, and I'll do better. I'm not great with words, though, so if there's something I've missed, you'll have to let me know."

Harry's skin was burning, both from embarrassment and a heady mixture of want and fear. 

Draco gave a deep sigh, leathered fingers releasing their grip on his arms as he let them loose at his sides. "I accept," he said.

Harry forced himself to look into Draco's face for a reaction and was glad to see that his cheeks were flushed regardless of his calm demeanour. The telltale spots of pink gave away that he was nervous, though he'd probably blame it on the heat. The thought made Harry smile.

"What's so funny?" Draco asked. Harry shook his head, looking at his scuffed trainers. He felt bashful, stood in a fucking toilet stall with Draco Malfoy. The space was so small that Harry's elbows grazed Draco's chest when he pushed the hair threatening to overtake his glasses back from his forehead.

"Nothing," Harry said, eyeing the pronounced bulge in Draco's jeans.

Draco closed the little gap of space between them so that they were toe to toe, hip to hip, resting one hand on the wall over Harry's shoulder. 

"You're not just here to apologize, are you, Potter?" he murmured. His height advantage was more obvious up close, and he leaned in, taking full advantage of it. Harry's breaths sped up as Draco's lips approached his neck, warm breath caressing his ear on each exhale. Harry was caught on a knifes edge, terrified of what was about to happen, what it meant that he'd followed Draco at all, and equally ecstatic that Draco had waited for him in it. 

Harry couldn't form a thought if he tried. He was all too aware that he was hard himself, thrumming with desire. _Please_ , he thought, _please don't make me say it_.

Draco gave no intention of talking either, using his nose to nudge a curl out of the way to lick the outer shell of Harry's ear, and Harry's brain turned fully off. He was paralyzed by lust, a shiver rippling down his spine like lightning.

Draco's laugh was light and sweet, almost a giggle at Harry's reaction. The tip of his tongue repeated the gesture, and Harry closed his eyes, enveloped in the electric feel of it and his smell, musky and sweet, cherry-wood and almonds. Harry's prick throbbed at the memory of the taste of his sweat when they'd been dancing all those weeks ago, how good his body had felt, all taut muscle and hard planes. Harry could hardly feel his fingertips, his breath gone shallow. He turned his face so their cheeks were nearly touching and inhaled, wanted to memorize this moment.

"You really thought you could get away with eye-fucking me like that all night?" Draco growled the words directly into Harry's ear, and Harry could hardly breathe; he was so turned on, and at the same time terrified that somehow Draco would pull away and laugh, that the whole scenario would be revealed as an elaborate joke. 

"I can see you so clearly, Potter. What you want, when I'm inside that mind of yours—it's so obvious. But do you know what you want?" He was so hard inside his trousers that it hurt.

That was until Draco leaned in the last few inches and ground his erection into Harry's hip, sighing as he did it. The press of his heated body promised sensual pleasure Harry hadn't yet known; the slight roll of his hips enough to scrape the last bit of sense from his mind. The breathiness of the sound Draco made drew a dribble of pre-come from Harry, leaking directly into the already damp cotton of his pants. 

"Are you pissed?" Draco pulled away to ask, his eyes heavy-lidded. Harry shook his head.

"Good," Draco said. He was so tortuously close, and Harry opened his mouth, inviting the kiss. "I won't have you when you're drunk." 

Harry licked his lips, horny and aching, needing more. When he moved his hands to Draco's hips and pulled him in roughly, frotting against him, it drew a quiet groan from him. 

"Fuck," Draco said, dropping his forehead to Harry's shoulder. Harry gripped him closer, closed his eyes and rubbed them together, drawing another groan from Draco's throat, and fuck if it wasn't the most incredibly hot sound he'd heard all year. Even through layers of clothing, sweating in a grimy stall, even though they hadn't kissed—Harry felt like he was floating. 

"I wasn't sure you'd come," Draco said quietly, breaking all contact by stepping away. He rested against the partition between their stall and the one next to them and looked up at Harry through those long, curled lashes of his and licked his lips, his cheeks entirely pink now. Harry loved knowing that _he'd_ done that. Draco's hips remained thrust forwards, and Harry wrapped his hands around them, so like handles, and then slid up into his shirt to cup his waist. His skin was gorgeously soft, and Draco's sharp intake of breath let Harry know that his desire was met. Harry was desperate not to let him get too far away.

"Didn't want to be too obvious," Harry said, his voice a low rumble. Draco arched a brow, his forever gesture of _Shall we?_ and Harry realized that he didn't want to waste what little, precious time they had on _talking_ anymore, either. He pressed the palm of his right hand against the solid bulge in Draco's black jeans and was rewarded with his eyelids flickering closed, a muffled sob escaping his throat.

"All that eye-fucking got you good and hard, though," Harry said, hand cupping Draco's erection with a gentle squeeze. Merlin, but he was hard as hell in his incredibly tight jeans, and he felt big beneath Harry's palm. Harry's fingers followed the shaft up to where the head met the trousers' top edge. A surge of want went through him; he needed this, more, Draco's skin and smell and taste, needed it now.

He bit his bottom lip in concentration as he rucked up Draco's shirt with his left hand, holding it out of the way in the middle of his chest. His eyes fell to the cockhead poking out over his waistband, so incredibly red and wet from precome already against the smooth, creamy expanse of this taut torso.

"God, you're gorgeous," Harry whispered, tracing down the soft skin of Draco's flat belly to rub the pad of his finger over the tip. He gasped and jerked as though electrocuted at the simple touch, and it made Harry all the more brazen. This moment was so unexpected, so like his fantasies, that everything was surreal, dreamlike. He used his right hand to pop the button to Draco's fly and released the straining zipper downwards, then smoothed his hand up from the swell of Draco's bollocks up the shaft through the damp cotton of his forest-green y-fronts.

"Jesus," he said, cupping the thick length of the shaft through the fabric, stroking gently. Draco's breathing was coming faster now, one arm looped over Harry's shoulder, hand cupping the base of Harry's head. Their foreheads met, both sets of eyes cast down at the sight of Draco's cock straining to be freed by Harry's wandering hand.

"We've got to be fast," Harry said absently, mouth watering as he shuffled closer and tugged Draco's pants down, tucking the elastic band under his bollocks. 

"Careful," Draco hissed, adjusting them himself. The sight of his black-leather glove so close to his balls made Harry's prick swell, a pulse he couldn't have predicted. Everything about Draco was a fucking turn-on to him—how could he have ever pretended otherwise? 

Draco removed his hand and let Harry continue to work, and Harry was all too eager to take over. His bollocks were tight up against his body, a neat package. Harry wanted desperately to fall to his knees right then and take them into his mouth, sucking them each in turn as he jerked Draco to completion on his face, in his hair, wherever he wanted, but he was too transfixed by learning Draco's cock with his hand to stop playing with it now that it was happening.

Harry ran the tips of his fingers down Draco's stomach just to watch it clench, down through his pubic hair, dark blonde and trimmed short. His chest and abdomen were smooth, hairless, acres of soft white skin marred only by the waxy pink lines of the _Sectemsempra_ scars Harry left there. He didn't have time to reminisce, refused to spend the time in this loo thinking of that time in another. His entire being was locked on Draco's perfect cock, a sight he knew he'd be wanking to until he gave up wanking. 

He spat in his hand.

"How's that?" Harry asked as he wrapped his fingers around the shaft and worked it up and around, spreading the meagre lube around. Draco made a high sound, cut off too soon in his throat, and nodded. 

Harry marvelled at how his skin could be so velveteen smooth when his prick was as stiff as steel, a perfectly straight rod that Harry desperately wanted to taste. Harry barely thought a _Lumos_ into being, the thin light surrounding them increasing so that he could better make out what it looked like as Draco’s prick slipped through the bronzed circle of his open fist. Harry couldn't drag his eyes from his work, and it didn't matter because Draco wasn't looking at Harry at all—his eyes were closed, eyelids flickering, head tipped back so that his hair tangled, obscuring lewd comments and phone numbers scrawled in haste. Harry played with the same handful of inches by the base for a while, and when he finally finished a stroke to the end, Draco banged the back of his head and shuffled his feet out to widen his stance and give Harry a better angle.

"Don't fucking stop, Potter," Draco whispered. Harry's hand moved in languorous paths up and down, twisting the way he liked it on himself. Harry tore his eyes away to stare at Draco's face, twisted with pleasure. He wanted so badly to suck onto his unblemished neck and mark him, somehow, leave a bruise for all the world to see, but didn't fucking dare.

He swallowed hard at the thought of being able to claim Draco's mouth with his own, feeling like a kiss would be too much, even though they were so close that Harry could taste Draco's breath. Lemons, not sour from beer or acrid from tequila. Harry concentrated instead on what he had before him. 

Draco's cock was unexpected. He was circumcised—odd—though Harry found it to be dead fun, letting the tight circle of his fist slide over the stopper of his tip and back down to the bottom of his shaft, no worrying about stretching his foreskin too far. Harry added his left hand, pleased to learn that Draco's prick was two-and-a-bit hands worth—longer than his own, that was for fucking sure—and Draco gave his breathiest gasp yet, licking dry lips, gasping now as Harry held tight with his right and let his left slide up and down.

"Not so tight— _fuck, fuck, fuck,_ " Draco whispered, fingers curling painfully into the nape of Harry's neck. Harry'd never swallowed a cock so long, and he wanted to try.

His mouth watered at the thought of trying to fit it into his throat, a skill of his. Though Draco was longer than Harry, Harry had a prick thick enough to feel no embarrassment about. Draco's was different was all, and gorgeous in a way Harry hadn't been able to envision.

Harry wanted to play with Draco's cock for days, wanted it desperately in his mouth, but if Draco's panting was any indication, he wasn't going to have the chance. He huffed short breaths, his chest noticeably rising and falling through his shirt. At the end of a pull, Harry squeezed, and Draco hissed and groaned as a fresh rivulet of pre-come oozed out of his slit.

"Christ," Harry whispered, swiping his thumb across the slit to wipe up the stream that had collected there. Draco watched, mesmerized as Harry quickly licked the digit, his right hand still pumping. They were so bloody close that Harry could make out the pinpricks of sweat gathering on Draco's nose, his cheekbones shining as perspiration built on his skin.

Draco tasted a little bit salty, and Harry's cock throbbed at that tidbit of carnal knowledge. He was so hard he ached, pained for release. Harry removed his hand for a moment and licked a wet stripe from his wrist to the tip of his middle finger, watching as Draco's eyes followed his tongue all the while, and stepped closer, even the tiniest bit of friction between Draco's hip and his own erection enough to drive him to the edge. He wrapped his hand back around the base of Draco's cock and held on as his other tugged at his bollocks. Draco's sounds were small and hot as Harry's hand slid up and the long length back down, gaining speed.

Harry realized that Draco was muffling the sounds that kept trying to escape his throat. He brushed his lips against Draco's jaw.

"You don't have to be so quiet," Harry said into his skin. It was torture trying to keep his voice even and to cover the shiver that ran through him as he ground himself into Draco's side, left hand gripping hard at his hip, right hand stripping Draco's shaft.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," Draco let out, gravelly and low, banging his head again against the partition. Harry distantly heard the door to the bathroom bang shut; he hadn't noticed it opening, didn't give a shit if someone had seen two pairs of shoes in a stall where one belonged. One of Draco's hands now held him by the small of his back, palm flat against the sweaty dip. The other gripped at his own thigh, long fingers tense. He hooked a leg around Harry's calf and held him closer that way, and though Harry hadn't been adequately touched, he was so close. When Draco's stomach caved in, his gloved hands gripping hard, pulling Harry closer, it was a touch too much.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, Potter," Draco groaned loudly now, no longer able to help himself. Harry pushed up his shirt once more as he gasped, "I'm coming, I'm coming—" and his hips jerked as come begun to spout from the angry red tip of his cock, hitting first above his navel and then painting stripes on his abdomen, dripping down over the amber brown of Harry's fingers that kept tugging him through the convulsions.

Draco came buckets; it was absurd, and it was so fucking hot, each spurt punctuated by a small, heated sigh from Draco. Harry knew he would never forget it, would hear him in his wet dreams. The spurts gradually reduced in power as Harry slowed his frenzied pulling, hand slippery and coated in warm, milky come. Harry's body trembled as he pressed against Draco, and it was a miracle that he forced himself to go still, stepping away as he loosed his grip.

"Jesus, Mary, and bloody, fucking, ever-loving Joseph," Draco said, resting one hand across the pool of glistening come on his abs, the other letting go of Harry and curling around the top edge of the partition wall. He heaved breaths, looking at Harry like he was god's gift to hand jobs.

Harry studied his wet hand and went to pop the pointer finger into his mouth. He was fast, but Draco was faster, snatching Harry by the wrist.

"Careful, there," he said. "Need we be treated to another episode like the one I saw at Roger's?"

Harry twisted free.

"Thank you," he said, "but I've stopped that regimen." Draco's eyes widened as he popped the finger into his mouth.

Draco tasted mild, only the slightest bit bitter. 

Harry hadn't realized he'd closed his eyes until he opened them to Draco's face, rosy mouth completely ajar.

" _Fuck_ , Potter," he said as Harry slipped the cleaned finger from his mouth. "It's so annoying that you're good at that."

Harry cracked a one-sided smile and shrugged. "What can I say," he said, a little too breathy for his liking.

"A _Scourgify_ would be nice," Draco said, grinning. He was calm, relaxed in a way Harry'd never seen him before. Some of the loose, baby-fine hair that framed his face was stuck to it now with sweat, but he didn't move to smooth it out of his face, left tendrils to drift loose over his ears. He looked a fucking treat to Harry, colour high on his cheeks, cock only slightly softened, hanging thick out the front of his still-open jeans.

Harry pulled his wand from his pocket and said the spell, cleaning not only his hand and Draco's stomach but apparently the entire stall as well, judging from the gust of lemon-balm scented air and sudden gleam to the metal fixtures of the toilet.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Bit strong." He pocketed his wand, flustered and tongue-tied again, though he knew he couldn't stand there staring at his nail-beds all night. He needed to say something quick and witty, a _See you around_ , or, _So this isn't talking anymore, is it?_

He opened his mouth to speak as Draco said, "Thanks for that." 

Harry shrugged again, watching as he tucked himself away and did up the fly.

"Now I won't go and do something stupid like fall back in bed with my ex just because he's here," Draco said dryly.

"I thought you said you didn't date," Harry blurted. It ought to have surprised him that that was the first thought to come to mind.

Draco tugged at the wrists of his sleeves. "Well, as far as I'm concerned, it was two years of fucking, but most people call that dating."

He licked his lips. "Shall I..." 

The sentence dangled, his eyes dropping to Harry's crotch. Harry held his hands up, shaking his head.

"No," he said, a little too loudly. Draco frowned, his soft smile gone in an instant. Harry recognized that he'd gone and fucked the moment up.

"No," he said, quietly this time, wincing, "it's only—we've no time. You should go light a cigarette and wave it around a bit, let the smell get in your hair for a minute."

"Or I could actually smoke it, you wank," Draco rolled his eyes but didn't belabour the point. Harry unlatched the door and let Draco shuffle past him, biting back a hiss when the curve of his arse brushed against him.

Draco stopped the door from swinging shut with a swift hand. He looked cross, working his lip between his teeth. 

"I suppose I owe you one," he said, standing awkwardly in the doorframe. Harry ached to step forwards and kiss him, pull him back inside, but he didn't dare try.

"It's not like that," Harry said, and he wanted to say more, but just then, the sounds of the pub intensified as someone entered the bathroom. Draco turned his head, and Harry's stomach sank—it could be anyone, and they couldn't be seen in any capacity together, not like this. Harry took a step further back into the stall; his _Lumos_ extinguished in an instant.

"Alright, then, whatever. Later," Draco said, and he let the door go and walked away. Harry was quick to lock it again, listening to the click of his heels and the rush of water from the sinks. It wasn't until Draco left for good that he could breathe normally.

"Idiot, idiot, idiot," he whispered furiously to himself, wincing as he stood, feet spread wide. He gingerly pulled his wand from his pocket and aimed another _Scourgify_ at his crotch to remove what hadn't been cleaned up during the first run.

He thanked the higher powers for ensuring that he'd worn black jeans that day and not his beloved powder-blues. It was torture that his spunk first pumped out so hot and then quickly seeped through the fabric, leaving a cold, wet, itchy patch behind. That Draco hadn't noticed the stain was a small miracle; that Harry had been able to swallow the sounds of his orgasm, as blinding as it had been, barely letting on with a shiver that it was happening at all—he hadn't known he had the strength to cover it up so thoroughly.

"You came in your _fucking_ pants like an idiot; that's what you did," he admonished himself, dropping down to sit on the toilet and lay his head in his hands. "Will my mortification literally ever know an end?"

"'Fraid not, mate," a voice said from a stall over, and Harry was glad that he didn't recognize the laughter that erupted at his groan. He had to be thankful for the small things, after all.

* * *

 **Notes:** Nothing like 10k+ chapters and a lemon to make the week worth it :) I hope you like it—comments and kudos are <3

Next chap up by **Friday, October 9**.


	7. Crup and Kneazle Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys attend a party and Grimmauld Place gets spruced up.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Physical abuse

* * *

**Saturday, September 20, 2003**

Thirty minutes. 

Harry itched with palpable discomfort as the first flashbulbs burst upon his arrival. He smiled automatically, loosened the muscles in his jaw, smiled again. He’d not even stepped from the viridian flames yet when the first question was hurled his way.

“Harry, when do you plan on bringing a chap out with you?”

"Good to see you too, Henrietta."

Smile, nod. Flash. Smile, nod. Stand still. Smile. 

If he could make it through the barrage of inevitable questions hurled at him from the pit of journalists assembled in the entranceway, shake the hands of the host and the Minister, and pose for photos with a few fans and dignitaries, he could call it a night.

"Hi there, Tom, how's the baby?"

“Colicky, thanks for asking." The older wizard tipped his hat towards Harry, a smile crinkling the deep wrinkles of his chestnut-coloured face. Tom was an old hand at this, and while polite, Harry knew he'd have something disarming up his sleeve. 

"How do you feel about the example you’re setting for our youth, advocating for alternative lifestyles?”

Harry contained his sigh, responding instead with a long blink and an indulgent, close-lipped smile.

He usually managed to accomplish everything he needed to within a tight thirty-minute window and was home banishing Floo powder from the hem of his robes before the last cup of tea he’d been sipping went cold. 

Smile, nod. Flash. Smile, nod. Swallow back the nervous want to vomit. Smile. Nod.

"Reem, it's been a minute. I'm beginning to miss trying to pick you out from a crowd."

"Oh, Harry, don't make me blush." A witch with a shock of waist-length salt and pepper hair replied, her tone more bored than teasing. Harry appreciated that she seemed to hate her job about as much as he disliked her for doing it.

"Your glamours are my favourite," he continued, "it’s only the nose that gives you away, really." Saying this, his smile wasn’t quite so forced. Two flashes went off at once, and he froze, his vision a blur of white.

“Noted," the witch replied, her voice onerous, nearly bored. "While we're talking looks, Harry, what’s your type? Blink once for blonds."

His smile faltered. 

“Oh, the gentleman prefers blonds, does he?" She took note and jotted this factoid down, or pretended to at least, just to make him sweat. "If you don’t want me to print that, blink twice for gingers."

It was only for a second before he regained composure and kept walking, but she’d noticed.

Not that she could know that his reaction was prompted by his recent, sudden, unbidden, absolutely uncalled for and deeply unsettling attraction to a certain blond. No, he reassured himself; she didn’t know. She couldn't read his thoughts.

Unlike the object of his desire. 

Which was going to be problematic, considering how many times Harry had wanked to thoughts of Draco in the past week alone. Add on top of that how shit an Occlumens he was. Especially when he was flustered. Or horny. Or both.

It was all going to go to shit, Harry thought, and quickly. Shit, shit, and more shit.

"That's all for tonight; I won't be taking questions, thank you!”

“Harry, come on now, readers were dying to know. How’d your ex take the news? Is it true she caught you with her brother, causing the breakup that shook wizarding Britain? Harry! Harry!”

Tonight would be a night much like any other. 

Harry had received the guestlist and outline of the evening’s festivities from Victoria, and kind of, sort of glanced at it. He knew exactly what he was in for, this being his fourth year in attendance at one of Bagman’s Bashes.

Ludo Bagman threw the event every year, always within the weeks following the Hogwarts Express’ departure. Therefore, it was perfectly timed, as the parents and guardians left behind were especially inclined to celebrate their newfound freedom from school-aged children. 

In typical Bagman fashion, the whole thing was a bit of a mess. Littered with Quidditch stars and their nubile partners, sponsored by Blishen’s Whisky (with free-pouring fountains of the stuff to be found in every room), the night ended for most party-goers the next morning with last-minute Portkeys to dance parties in Berlin. 

Harry was literally biting his tongue by the time he gave one last wave to the press. The red carpet came to an abrupt end, and a pair of thick purple velvet curtains pulled back, revealing a remarkably subdued ballroom. He was early, at least for the under-fifty set, and the party was just getting started.

He dropped the smile immediately. Kingsley Shacklebolt was visible, a head taller than most people in the room, deep in conversation with a Bagman’s wife and son. The bagpipe player from the Weird Sisters—Harry never could quite remember his name—was telling some rip-roaring story to a group of about a half dozen witches, gesturing wildly next to a precarious ice sculpture of a dragon perched atop a mountain. Otherwise, a quick scan didn’t reveal any friendly faces. Before too many heads turned and noticed him, he beelined for the high doors on the far side of the room. They were swung open to the hazy evening air but provided only the illusion of respite, as not even the whisper of a breeze cut through the heat that pummelled down. 

On his way out the door, he grabbed at the last drink from a roving side table. The table folded itself up with a slap of wood on wood and took off at a trot.

“Sorry—I mean, thank you!” he called at its back, realizing too late that the moving furniture wasn’t furniture at all but actually house-elves dutifully carrying trays of drinks above their heads. Bagman was old-school in several ways, and one of them was his holding on to a virtual army of house-elves to run his household. Harry felt conflicted about being seen as aligned with a man who had twice voted against S.P.E.W. measures for the equitable treatment of house-elves. And yet, here he was, at another Bagman party that he hated, avoiding the people with whom he morally disagreed and yet felt obligated to rub shoulders with. Because he was supposed to. Or perhaps because it was easier this way. His teenage self would be aghast at the shit he let slide now. 

Harry slipped outside the doors, took a look around to ensure that he was indeed alone before letting out a great sigh and sliding down the wall to sit. The grass was prickly and dry, the rolling hills' lustrous green colour beyond some kind of illusion. He ripped open the top three buttons of his dress robes to reveal his throat and top of his chest—though it barely helped—and sniffed at the drink. It smelled vaguely of lime, but even so, he girded himself for a surprise as he took a measured sip and held it in his mouth.

"They're gin and tonic tonight,” Malfoy's drawl was suddenly at his side. “No need to pull a face.”

Harry’s head swivelled too fast at the sound.

He spluttered the word, "Malfoy," before giving in to a coughing fit. Malfoy, for one, didn't look impressed, barely able to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head, his mouth a tight line.

“They’re meant to be drunk, Potter, not aspirated.”

Harry had expected to run into him again, sure, but as the week wore on with nary a piece of correspondence in the interim, he’d begun to think that their meetings had been a blip. Simply an odd couple of weeks fuelled by chance. He'd assumed that if he saw Malfoy at all again, it would be from a distance, his haughty laugh floating down to Harry from up on high. 

_Potter?_ His dream Malfoy said to an assembled crowd, tone incredulous. _I let him pull me off in a grotty toilet once._ Dream Malfoy smiled, thin and vicious. _He’s a cheap date—I didn’t even have a spend a knut for him to do it._

Malfoy crossed his arms, tilting his head as Harry regained his breath. From the way his hackles were raised, Harry expected his next words to be barbed.

“I rather thought it was Draco now?” he asked.

“Um, okay.” This wasn't the tack he'd expected, but Harry wasn't so thick as to disagree. He pushed up his glasses to wipe away the tears that had wet his lashline. "Yeah. Of course. Draco.”

No smile greeted his words. Harry got to his feet and cast around for something to say. 

"The lawns are parched this time of year," popped out of his mouth. Draco gave him a pained look and turned to regard them, his silence telegraphing a lack of interest.

Harry took a measured gulp of his drink, sweat building at the nape of his neck. What was he supposed to say? _Hey, is your heart pounding out of your chest the way mine is? Develop a ridiculous pash on any childhood enemies lately?_

Another sip and the single slice of lime was left marooned atop a pile of drained ice. Harry took a deep breath, tried again. 

“Since when do they serve hi-balls at one of these things?"

He looked over as Draco kicked at the grass, hands in pockets, his standard bored affect in full-force as though it wasn’t him who had started the conversation in the first place.

"How would I know, considering I haven't been to one of these things since I was fifteen?" he mumbled. His shoulders lifted and sagged. "I'd wager that it was since all things Muggle became fashionable. Did you notice the red carpet?” 

Harry nodded, but Draco didn’t bother looking at him for an answer, incredibly interested in the patch of dirt at his toes.

“I hear they're going to screen a film later,” Draco said, pulling his hands free from their pockets to mime air quotes. It was such a Muggle thing to do, novel. Harry found it adorable. “The grey-hairs are positively a titter with anticipation."

“Which one?” Harry asked. 

“Something by the name of _Jurassic Park_." Draco looked up at long last, and Harry noticed the line of pink running right across his nose and cheeks. He'd been out in the sun too long—unless he was purposely going for a slightly burnt look with the help of cosmetics and charms. Harry didn't care which; it looked endearing, either way. "Ring any bells?”

Harry’s face broke into a broad smile.

“An absolute classic. I’ve seen it a million times. My cousin was obsessed with it back when we were in school. It’s got dinosaurs.”

Draco frowned. “What’s a dinosaur?”

Harry shook his head in wonder. “They’ve honestly got to improve early education for you pureblood types. How do you not know about dinosaurs?”

“They’re a Muggle thing, then?” Draco asked.

“No, not really. Dinosaurs were here, roaming the earth way before we even showed up. They’re incredible! Like, well, some of them were sort of like dragons. Some flew, plenty of them had these enormous teeth and claws, but there were gentle kinds too, you know, the kind that eats plants. Just like animals now, only—you’d, uh,” Harry stammered, coming back to himself, “you’d like it. The film, I think.”

Harry lapsed into silence as he realized he’d been gushing about dinosaurs like he was eight. And he'd been doing it in front of Draco, the man who had sidled up to his side to chat him up about cocktails and films as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do, and it was all off. 

How was he meant to do this? Just talk to him? Like he hadn’t wanked himself raw thinking of all the various ways they could go from verbal sparring to duelling to, well, some tussling that would naturally lead to incredible sex if Harry’s cock had any say in the matter. Like he hadn't held his cock in his hand, pressed his cheek against his cheek and made him sigh. Like hadn't learned the sounds he made when he came.

Not that Draco seemed particularly comfortable either. Harry took a moment to give him a once over. He was absolutely too obvious about it, but Draco still wasn't looking at him, and since when had he ever been accused of being smooth?

Rather than the standard black or jewel-toned dress robes that were the charitable class's uniform, Draco wore a motorcycle jacket of lived-in leather, a primly buttoned white shirt, and tight black jeans. The same riding gloves he’d worn to the café hugged his hands, and Harry was able to take in a silver stud earring and the ubiquitous pair of oversized black lacquer sunglasses hiding his eyes before Draco noticed.

"My eyes are up here, Potter, _Merlin_ ," he lamented. "I know that you didn't have a proper upbringing, but someone ought to have taught you by now that it's rude to stare."

“I wasn’t staring,” Harry said, though when he looked in Draco’s face and away again, his eyes decided to land very unhelpfully on his crotch, where the outline of his prick was clearly hanging to the left, and then his hands, hands in leather gloves that Harry was fast developing a _thing_ for. 

Draco snapped his fingers lightning quick in front of Harry’s face to break his reverie. 

“Haven't you any manners?"

"You've got to stop doing that,” Harry said, swatting away the hand a second too late.

"I'll stop when you stop," he snapped. "What's caught your eye?"

"Er, I—I just. You're wearing jeans." 

Harry was off-balance at being caught checking Draco out and having noticed by said checking out that Draco looked fucking incredible in said jeans. He gulped nervously. This wasn't going well.

"Well spotted." Draco sniffed and crossed his arms, head swivelling as he surveyed the lawn around them. His pointed way of not facing Harry, steadfast in his refusal to look directly at him, was strange. Perhaps now that they'd shared a frot, now that he'd come with Harry's help, he was bored with him. Harry resigned himself to pretending this treatment was normal, as though they just happened to be standing next to one another.

"But, I mean. You're in Muggle clothes. At Ludo Bagman’s house." 

"Again, well fucking spotted, Potter. I'm comfortable, and I look good, so yes, I wore the Muggle clothes I enjoy to the wizarding function. Is there a problem?"

"No.”

“Good. I'm glad that’s settled."

Caught between the odd glances thrown their way through the open doors and the bitter edge to Draco's voice, Harry was at a loss for what to say next. He cast _Tempus_ to fill the moment. Twenty-two minutes. It might as well be a year.

"Do you want me to leave?” asked Draco.

"No!" Harry's vehement response caused a witch who had been hovering increasingly close to the two of them to jump and scurry hastily away, her heels clicking on the parquet floors.

"I mean, no, it’s not you. The longer you stay, the further the crowd keeps away, if I'm honest."

Draco barked a laugh that made Harry's shoulders release a bit of tension he hadn't known to be growing in them. The gin was creating a warm, squirmy feeling in his stomach. 

_Yes_ , he thought. _T_ _he gin_. 

"You’re keeping me around because I'm good crowd repellent?" Draco touched his fingertips to his collarbone. "Why, I'm delighted. Who am I to say no to that sparkling invitation?”

Harry scoffed. “I’ve said worse, and you’ve survived.”

“Touché." Draco's raised brow was visible over the top of his sunglasses, only barely. "We've both done worse, and yet here we were."

“You’d almost think with our history, we’d want to be as far apart from one another as we could get," Harry answered with a crooked smile.

“And yet,” Draco replied, tone bone-dry.

Harry wasn’t sure what to say to that, so instead, he nervously shook the ice in his empty glass, and then when he could tell it was annoying Draco, stopped that and worried his lip instead. What he wouldn't give for something to do other than small-talk.

"If you aren't counting down the seconds till you can be rid of me—which I find difficult to believe, by the way," Draco spoke slowly, "what’s got you worried about the time?" He always was good at filling in the silence for the both of them. 

Harry thought on the question while watching the growing crowd beyond the double doors. Ludo Bagman practically gave himself whiplash from the velocity of his double-take in their direction, and he noticed a few sets of eyes pointedly flick away when he looked their way. His mood darkened as he realized that his time alone with Draco was on a timer too. 

"I give myself a minimum amount of time at these things,” he said at last. The truth was usually more difficult to give, but Draco had an exceptionally low tolerance for Harry's bullshit. And there was that pesky part, where he _liked_ having Draco around. 

"Thirty minutes, give or take. They're just—I'm no good at this stuff."

“So you dress up and come to the party,” Draco drawled, his vowels lazy. Harry wondered if perhaps he was on his way to drunk too. "But you don’t want anyone to approach you or to have to talk to anyone because you hate crowds and abhor parties?”

“That’s about the size of it, yep,” Harry said grimly. 

"Why bother coming then?"

Harry shrugged. He so wanted to face Draco and have a normal conversation but felt that he'd be unable to figure where to look. Instead, he cast his gaze around, offering tight smiles as his eyes meet those of confused guests caught staring in his direction.

"I’ve got to, don’t I? I owe them that much.”

“Who’s this ‘them’ you speak of? They seem awfully powerful.”

“You know,” Harry gestured blithely, not sure how he could explain the crushing need he felt to appease the literal masses. 

Draco scoffed. “You can’t possibly mean everyone." Harry could feel the blush growing on his face, and Draco gave his sharp, barking laugh. "Come on, Potter, you can't be serious. Just anyone who happens to ask?” 

Harry bit his lip at his continued drawl, eerily identical to the tone he’d taken back in their school days. He was still so very skilled at making Harry feel small when he wanted to. 

“I know it sounds like it, but who am I to say no, you know? It’s only my time, and it’s not like I have a real job these days. If I show up, so do the press, and all the rich, finicky pureblood types, and their pocketbooks.”

He wished he could swallow his words, but when he stole a glance, Draco had a wry smile on his face, the one canine catching at his lower lip. There, Harry could look there. What was so dangerous about looking at the face of the person you were speaking with? 

“No offence,” Harry added.

“As one of those pureblood types with a poor early childhood education and a rich, finicky way about me—no offence taken." His smile widened, though he looked to be trying to control it. "You'd be so much less annoying if you let yourself be mean on occasion, you know.” It was Draco’s turn to steal a glance at Harry, and it betrayed the fact that he was amused now. "Or at the very least honest."

"I'm honest," Harry frowned.

"You're nice, sure, but you're not honest about it. You see, truly nice people want to do the charity thing, Potter. Good little celebrities actuallyenjoy the spotlight." He gestured to the crowd, to the people charming their hair different colours and taking turns at the photo booth in the corner, throwing up peace signs and doing duck-lips at the photographer. "You’re playing pretend on both counts.”

“I figure I’ll keep faking it, and then one day, I won’t have to anymore.” Harry surprised himself in admitting this. His mouth always seemed to get the better of him when Draco was around. 

"Do you hear yourself when you talk?" Draco asked. "Because you must not. Otherwise, you'd be terrified at how depressing you sound." 

Harry ignored him and blundered on against the alarm bells going on in the back of his mind. "I think it’s a win-win-win, as I recall someone much cleverer than me once putting it.”

“Incorrect. It’s a win-win for the press and for the charities, but you’re losing because you clearly hate being paraded around." Draco turned to face him properly and took a step closer to him, and Harry's blood raced. Draco lowered his voice, the moment becoming more intimate. "It's surprising to me that more people don’t see through your bullshit.” Draco gave him a once over every bit as obvious as the one Harry had given him, and Harry could feel where his gaze lingered; at the level of his hips, the edge of his shoulder, and dragging every inch up his neck. “What’s truly offensive is you clinging to that pathetic messiah complex of yours for so long.”

Harry swallowed against a parched throat. He wanted to be touched, properly, by Draco, and he wanted it badly.

"And here I thought that what was truly offensive were my boot-cut trousers." He struggled to keep his voice light.

"I see you've progressed from boot-cut to a straight leg tonight—congratulations on your sartorial improvement—so it's the saviour act that's getting on my nerves right this moment."

"Not taking the bait on that one," Harry outstretched a finger from around his tumbler to point at Draco. "You sound like Hermione when you say that, you know." Draco grimaced, and Harry felt absolutely vindicated in shoving him with his shoulder for it. The touch, though brief, was electric. Magic rippled with anticipation along his skin, tingling, and he wanted more of it. More of the feeling he only got when Draco was around.

"I'm serious; those might be her favourite descriptors of my problematic behaviour. 'Messiah complex' is definitely in the top ten."

Harry gestured inside, and Draco, for whatever earthly reason, followed him. Harry sought a tray, this time crouching down to nip a pair of cocktails off the top and leaving a Knut's tip in their place.

"Thank you," Harry said, craning his head at an awkward angle to smile at the house-elf standing underneath. Wide eyes widened even further with recognition, and he caught the beginning of a startling shriek before the house-elf, tray and all, disappeared with a _crack_.

"Why must you terrorize the house-elves so, Potter? Oh—thank you," Draco added, surprised as Harry handed him a drink. He cast his free hand in a gesture Harry didn’t recognize across it, as though pulling a cloth draped across its top free.

"I'm not—,” Harry took a deep breath. The dimple in Draco's cheek was a tell that he was trying to rile him up on purpose. "Not falling for it. So—what actually brings you here?"

"Honestly?" Draco shook his head a touch in a movement that would make sense if his hair were down, though it was pulled back into a loose ponytail-bun-thing. Harry wondered if it was a nervous habit. Did he usually wear it up, or only on special occasions? 

"Honestly, it's because my therapist told me that I need to speak to another person at least once a day—literally anybody. And," he motioned a hand around in a gesture that was all poise and grace, "my mother is constantly on about ' _why don't do something befitting of your station, rather than all that dreadful work, Draco?'_ So, you know. Two owls, one stone."

“Your therapist,” Harry said. It was odd how easily it rolled off Draco's tongue while it felt like a soiled word on Harry's.

“Yes, I rather thought I’d mentioned that before. Is there an echo in here, or is it just me?”

“Sorry, it’s just—“

Draco sighed dramatically. “You don’t have to apologize every time I point out your faults, Potter. It turns half of your sentences to _sorry_ , and it’s terribly annoying. Yes, my therapist. And before you ask, since you’re having such a difficult time grasping simple concepts tonight, you do count as literally anybody. Which was why we’re doing this right now. That which is commonly known as talking.”

When Harry leaned against the wall behind them, Draco joined him, propping a foot up against the flocked wallpaper as though he owned the place. He was close enough that Harry could smell him, the ever-present whiff of tobacco mixing with something he didn’t recognize. His insides roiled as the calm he'd felt outside entirely left him because this couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t possibly be having this conversation right now. Smelling Draco Malfoy. Liking it.

"So, does that make me the first person you've spoken to today?" Harry kept his voice level, careful not to give away the spark of hopefulness this thought brought him. That Draco had chosen him, somehow. 

Draco finally turned to face him, only to stare at the opening of his robes. He went on so long that Harry looked down, rubbing nervously at the skin at the top of his chest.

"What? Is there something on my—"

"Nothing, it's nothing," Draco shook his head, pushing off the wall. "Potter, your powers of observation never fail to astound. That is to say, yes.”

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, you're my first and only. Person," he clarified, "that I've spoken to today. You should feel proud."

"I'm honoured," Harry said. The dimple deepened into a smile on Draco's lips. It made Harry’s traitor of a heart sing.

"Why are you still wearing sunglasses inside?" Harry found himself asking. "It's practically nightfall."

Harry cursed his second drink. He should be pacing himself—cocktails at Bagman's were freely poured, and liberal ones at that, and he'd had a few ciders before he left the house. If his first questions were out of awkwardness, this last was entirely due to a tongue loosened by alcohol. 

Draco stiffened. "Are we playing twenty questions?"

"Just making conversation."

Instead of answering, Draco cast his own _Tempus_ into the air above them. "How much time do you have left, then?"

Harry appraised the time.

"Ten minutes, give or take. I still need to shake the Minister's hand—"

"No need, it’s not his party," Draco interrupted.

"—and then I can be on my way. Don't think I don't notice you avoiding the question.”

"I'm not avoiding it. I’m bargaining. Maybe I'll answer you later, but not for free."

“As if you need the gold,” Harry said.

“How do you think the rich get richer?” Draco asked. He finished the rest of his drink and tossed the glass, banishing it into thin air with a lazy flick of his wand. Something about this nonchalant bad-boy behaviour did things to Harry, made his hot skin prickle.

He was in so much trouble.

"I don't adhere to your silly rules about these things, and I don't even know what the silent auction is in support of—”

“Crups and kneazles,” Harry supplied, and Draco threw his hands in the air. 

“Gods, it’s even worse than I thought. Crups and kneazles? What’s Bagman pretending at? If the cover for throwing a soirée were any thinner, it would be me at the height of squandering my family's fortune on Columbia’s finest cocaine." Harry gawked, but Draco barely gave him time to acknowledge the audacity of his statement as he continued to rail on. "Now look, I'm getting out of here to have some real fun. Wizards don't know how to make Muggle drinks worth shit, and we ought to admit it, and a film, however full of monsters—"

"Dinosaurs, actually—"

Draco waved his hands impatiently, "—whatever, Muggle child-entertainment isn’t my idea of a Saturday night worth having. So," he looked behind Harry, scoping out the fireplaces on the far wall of the ballroom, "if you want to know so badly about the sunglasses, I'll trade you. Tit for tat.”

“Like a game?”

“Sure, fine, yes, whatever," Draco shrugged. "Interested?"

The butterflies that had been flitting about Harry's stomach turned to writhing beetles at this invitation. The optics weren’t good; any minute he’d run into someone close to him, and he’d remember that this was Malfoy he was with, not _Draco;_ that this was Draco Malfoy, the boy he hated turned into the man he should loathe, and the game would be up. A photo would be snapped, or Draco would step over the line and say something awful, or Harry would snap and do something regrettable, and it would turn into a fight, and the moment would break, it was all going to come to a screeching halt, and—

"Yes," Harry said.

A wide grin broke across Draco's face, promising nothing but debauchery. 

"We can’t, erm. How do we, uh." Harry ran a nervous hand through his hair. They couldn't be seen leaving together—far too obvious. And where was it that they could go together? 

"We can’t just leave, though,” Harry said, feeling painfully naive. 

"Just do what I do—write your Gringotts vault number and your donation amount on some parchment and palm it into the host's hand as you shake it goodbye.” 

Draco said this as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. He winced as he pulled a few hairs from his scalp, holding on to them as he undid the top buttons to his shirt. Harry swallowed as inches of skin were revealed, the sharp points of his collarbones meeting across a deep dip, the size of his thumb. 

"What are you doing?" Harry asked, suddenly worried that Draco was about to do something genuinely insane in full view of every Ministry dignitary and politician. 

"Getting my wand out, keep your dick in your pants," he muttered. Harry ignored the sharp feeling of so many people staring. He forced down the anxiety building as he noticed the curtains on the far side of the room rustling, a familiar maroon high-heel visible at the bottom. That meant at least one intrepid photographer had snuck into the ballroom—Reem, Harry recognized her shoe—and there would be pictures of the two of them if they didn’t move soon. Sure they were only chatting, but it could never just be chatting could it, what would the headlines be, what would Ron and Hermione say, gods what would Victoria do about it— 

Even with all the nauseating, worrying nonsense running through his mind, when Harry looked forwards again, it was to Draco. Only Draco, impeccably dressed. Draco filling the frame, and Harry allowed himself to imagine what pleasures could maybe, somehow, someday outweigh the consequences of him enjoying this evening. Because everything seemed so easy and smooth and straightforward for Draco. When he was smiling and poking fun at Harry, he couldn’t feel all the eyes staring, all the lips poised to sneer, all the barbs on the tips of tongues. 

Harry wanted to know how he did it, how to not care about what people thought of him. He watched as Draco plunged one hand into his now gaping shirt and came back out with his wand. 

"That's it?" Harry asked.

Draco transfigured one hair into a slip of parchment, the other into a Bic pen. He scratched a few test lines into it and hummed with pleasure when the black ink flowed.

"That's it. Keep it simple. If my Father taught me one useful thing, it's that you can pay your way out of or into anything with a little ingenuity. Do keep up."

Harry nodded as though this made all the sense in the world. Draco scrawled something on the parchment and ripped a slip off, handing the items to Harry.

"Seems even you're catching the Muggle-fever," Harry said, twiddling the pen.

"I got tired of ruining my trousers with spilled ink in the pockets, alright? These are better than quills; I'll debate anyone on it." Draco tried to grab the pen from Harry's grip, but Harry saw it coming and twisted his arm behind his back to pocket it for himself.

"Where've your Seeker's reflexes gone, Draco?" Harry teased. 

Draco's eyes flared, the look going straight to Harry's cock. "Oh, how I want to make you pay for that," he said, low.

Harry swallowed hard. "Should I ask what you mean by that?"

Draco smiled, devilish and slow. "That would be telling." He seemed to remember where they were, took a half-step back, away from Harry. "Now look—we can’t leave together, for obvious reasons. I'll Floo to yours as I've got a very delicate potion on the hob, and I don’t trust that you won't trip over yourself and spill the whole thing. Wait a moment before you leave." He looked up, over Harry's shoulder. "Ah, there's the Minister who's hand you so wanted to shake—take your time with him."

"Why?" Harry asked, confused.

“I believe you had some choice words for him about clandestine weekend hearings and the like,” he said, and Harry swallowed, remembered anger spiking inside him. “Only kidding. It’s so I have more time to poke around in your bathroom vanity uninterrupted, obviously." 

Draco turned without a goodbye, heading towards the grizzled hair of Bagman’s head visible in a throng of black-robed figures. 

Harry turned, and sure enough, there was Shacklebolt, and he should say hello, set a meeting on some clearly needed further reforms of Ministry practices before taking his leave. There were maybe thirty feet of tile from where he stood to the nearest unused Floo, and Harry could see suddenly how this sort of thing could be so simple, maybe even fun—god forbid—because of all of a sudden, he wasn't all alone at the ball.

He had a friend in this, a guide who knew this world in a way he’d never been taught or told.

He was with Draco Malfoy, and who could have known that it could feel this _good_.

* * *

Not more than ten minutes later, Harry stepped from the kitchen fireplace grate and immediately knew something was amiss.

First, Kreacher was there. This wasn’t in and of itself ominous, as the elf split his time between the Hogwarts kitchens and the house. It was that he was on the edge of tears, a state Harry never once imagined he'd see him in.

Second, gleaming bottles of every size and colour lined the credenza that had, ever since Harry first inherited the house, lain empty. A pyramid of goblets with silver-rimmed edges shined to one end, while towers of glassware heretofore unknown to him lined the other. A bucket that must be equal to, if not exceeding, Harry's weight sat on the centre of the usually barren table. It was filled to the brim with ice cubes the size of his fist, serpentine tongs resting on top. 

"What," Harry asked the room, "is happening."

"Here, Master," Kreacher snapped his fingers, and Harry's robes vanished, leaving him in the white vest and jeans he’d worn underneath of them. 

"What the fuck, Kreacher?" This was new and startling, and while not terrible (he had been boiling in the things), he would have preferred a warning before they were snatched from his body.

"Would Master care for a drink?" Kreacher blinked up at him wetly, but with something close to...happiness? "Something sweet as the treacle he is partial to?" 

“Excuse me, but _what_?"

"The house has sloe gin, Master will like that, yes, here, sit, sit with your venerated guest Master, pretend as though Kreacher is not here. Kreacher is not here. Kreacher is only here to serve."

With a strength that belied his six centuries on the planet, Kreacher pushed at the backs of Harry's legs, causing him to nearly trip over himself on his way to the table. 

The table which Draco Malfoy, still bespectacled, was lounging on and smirking at him from, not unlike a very expensive cat. His shirt had fallen slightly more open, revealing an expanse of milky white skin and jutting collarbones, and Harry had rarely wanted to lick or suck a part of a person's body more than he did during that moment. 

"Love what you've done with the place," Malfoy said, plucking a dark cherry from his glass and chewing merrily on it. 

Harry felt as though he must be dreaming. "You're getting off on this."

"I am. You're almost cute when you're confused."

"I—what?” Harry's brain short-circuited at the combination of words.

“Cute. Though this look is,” Draco trailed off, dipping his head in a study of Harry’s attire. 

Harry swallowed nervously. Draco had to be drunk to be openly looking at him this way. That was the only explanation.

"None of this was here when I left,” Harry changed the subject. The threadbare carpet appeared to have had a decade's worth of dust banished from it, glowing in deep reds and emeralds so unlike the greyed tones he'd come to associate it with. The wood of the table gleamed from the light filling the room with a hearty shade of yellow. Where exactly it was emanating from, Harry hadn't a clue.

"It wasn't quite like this when I arrived, but when Kreacher here so readily marked me as a Black by blood, the house took his signal to show me a warm welcome. I'm ever so grateful, Kreacher, by the way."

Harry felt something cold and wet nudge his hand and looked down to a goblet of ruby red liquid being pressed into it by Kreacher, who, at these words, began to shed tears.

"Kreacher is forever honoured to have a guest of young master Malfoy's distinction to serve. Ask for anything, and the house will provide, yes, now, Kreacher will leave Master and the Black-Malfoy heir to their business. Anything, ask for anything—" and before he could descend into full-blown hysteria, Kreacher Apparated away.

"Oh. My god."

"Right?" Draco gestured at the rows of liquors, "Your house sure knows how to throw a party; I'll give you that, Potter."

"This is, it's—" Harry shook his head in wonder. "Wow."

"Come now; it's just a bit of spiffing up.”

“You’re saying the house did all this?”

“It’s a wizarding house, Potter. If it’s treated like it's a dull, unloved thing, it’ll act like one. But show it a little kindness, and it’ll show you a good time. Speaking of," Draco put his drink down and licked his lips, leaving them shiny and pink, "if you show me a good time, I'll come back. I could probably get it to re-do the wallpaper for you." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively over the top rim of his glasses. 

"I accept payment in compliments and Galleons; I'm not fussy about which. How's your drink?"

Harry took a hesitant sip and groaned with pleasure.

"It's incredible," Harry said, looking to the glass in disbelief. He craned his head to yell at the ceiling. "Kreacher, this is the best thing you've ever made. Wherever you are, thank you!"

"The bar must have been exceptionally low for a cocktail to have this kind of effect on you," Draco said.

"He did once gift me a box of maggots for Christmas, so, in short, it was," Harry said. Draco laughed openly, a rich, deep rumbly sound.

"Alright, well, down to business," he said, clearing his throat. He cracked his knuckles, odd, something Harry hadn't ever seen him do before. "You asked about the sunglasses.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “We don't have to do the whole bit. I thought you wanted to go out and have fun? Like normal people?" He hoped it wasn't horribly obvious how much he wanted to go out with Draco, to potentially finally learn what his lips felt like; to be able to touch him again, in an alley or a loo if he had too—Harry didn't care if it meant he could take comfort in his bare skin again.

“Yes, all in good time. It's a bit of a story, but bear with me."

“Is this still the game,” Harry asked, shifting his weight onto one leg, “tit for tat like you said? Or could it be truth or dare? I prefer that one.” His tongue was working miles ahead of his brain now. He should have eaten dinner tonight.

He should still be at Ludo Bagman’s tonight. 

But he was drinking with Draco Malfoy.

 _Oops_.

Draco shrugged. "Sure."

"And you're doing Truth?"

"Yes. Whatever, Potter, just shut up and let me tell the story. I visit my mum once a week. Don't," Draco held up a finger to silence Harry, who dutifully closed his mouth around the question he was forming, "listen, it'll only take a minute."

"I visit my mother once a week. Usually, it's lunch in Diagon Alley, but this time I went to the Manor. Her request. So we're eating, and everything's going about as well as it can. She's snarking; I'm trying to be polite." Draco stood to walk the length of the room, leaving Harry alone at the table. He watched, rapt as he was treated to the view of Draco from the back, his arse perfect in his jeans as he ran a gloved finger along the stone walls.

"Surprise, though, my father’s home. I don't see him anymore; that's part of the little deal we have going on. So he came in just as I'm leaving and mentioned that he’d heard that I've taken up with the enemy—"

Harry's heart gave out at these words. 

"—the Ministry, obviously." Draco continued as though nothing happened, rounding the table and walking back as Harry fought to keep his breathing even. 

_Go_ , his brain spat at him. _Run._

"Listen, Draco, I've just remembered—," Harry shifted awkwardly, but Draco reached out and touched his wrist. It sent waves from Harry's nerve endings directly to the place where the spine met brain. He was going to do something reckless if the touching continued.

"Wait, I'm nearly at the good part. So he came in and said this, and not only that but that he’d heard through the grapevine that I've been spreading my legs at filthy mixed bars now—"

"Gollybean?" Harry asked, swallowing against a throat suddenly gone dry. Draco nodded, his fingers circling loosely around Harry's wrist now, and oh godfuckingdamnit Lucius Malfoy knew about him, about the feeling he got when he looked at Draco, he’d heard that they were dancing together, it was all over—

"Yes, Gollybean. And he asked why it is that his son feels the need to sleep his way through wizarding Britain—"

"Draco, I have to go—"

"— and I say—"

"—it's only I've got to—"

"—How else am I going to meet Mr. Right?—"

"—I need a slash—"

"—And you know what he did then?" 

Harry wrenched away, holding the spot where he’d been touched as though he'd been branded.

"He punched me in the fucking face," Draco said, lightly, jovial, almost.

"No," Harry said, stunned. They stood in silence for a moment; Draco's smile wavered. 

"That fucking bastard."

"Oh, I assure you, yes, he did. And I agree—Lucius continues to be a bit of a problem I have to surmount."

Draco lifted his hands to the sunglasses, fingers framing his thin face. 

"Well. Anyway. That's why I'm wearing these. It wouldn't do to show up to Bagman's looking a mess." 

Draco pulled them off then, looking down as he carefully folded the tines. The bruise gone the gemstone shades—the purple of pansies, mustard yellow, and peacock green—encircled his left eye. When his eyes fluttered up to meet Harry's gaze, what should have been white was pink and nearly hidden for being swollen shut. Harry's stomach constricted as white-hot rage pulsed within him. He could kill Lucius Malfoy.

“That’s the punchline. Get it?”

“Draco,” Harry held his eyes, urging his mind to open up as he poured the words _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,_ through to him, over and over and over again. He kept them running in his head, hoping that Draco would somehow read them because he couldn’t tell how he’d react if he dared say them aloud. 

“That’s awful," Harry said quietly.

Draco scowled at the cherry stem rolling between his fingers. “I’ll admit, it’s not hilarious, but it’s not worth crying over.”

It felt like they were boys again, somehow. Draco, desperate to hold on to the illusion of normalcy. That this was okay. That he had things under control, that he was fine. And Harry, wanting to run from the feelings that threatened to overwhelm him. Run, or lash out, the two things he was good at when confronted with a feeling he couldn't accept. 

“I’m not crying,” Harry said, at last. The words sounded to his ears like they came from someone else’s lips. His feet were rooted to the spot, though the more he processed how this had come to be, the stronger his urge was to bolt. 

Because this was what happened when Harry cared about someone. Even for a moment. Even in secret. Guilt swept over him like the tide coming in, the feeling that should have taught him better by now. Guilt was never far behind Harry feeling close to someone. Thinking he could be with someone, somehow. Imagining a life together. He knew better than to allow himself to feel for a person publicly. 

_You should have known better._

Of course this had happened. He was responsible, and Draco didn’t even know it. 

So he stood and, instead, endured it. He couldn't abandon Draco, not now. 

Harry didn’t mind being burdened with other people’s pain because, if anything, he was built to take it. Born to, even. He could eat Draco's pain. If Draco could stand this, he could too. 

Draco cleared his throat, keeping his head down. “He used to stick entirely to hexes. So much more civilized. Even he’s caught the Muggle fever, it seems."

“Draco,” Harry started again, but as he watched his face start to close up, the forced joviality turning to hardened pride, he realized that a soft touch wasn’t what was being asked for.

Harry took a tentative step forward. 

“When was this?” he asked.

“Yesterday."

"You're too shit at healing charms to fix it yourself, then?" Harry asked after a beat. A dimple appeared in one pale cheek, Draco's eyelashes fluttering as he looked up to Harry for a moment. His look said the _thank you_ that Harry knew would never leave his lips. To thank Harry for his kindness would be to admit that he needed it.

"Exactly. It's only I’ve got work Monday, and I'm not allowed to wear a glamour, so I figured—"

“Yeah, no, I’ve got it. I’ve got a mean _Episkey._ Here," Harry drew his wand and motioned for Draco to move forward until he sat at the edge of the table. Harry stood between his knees and tilted his face up to the light with a gentle touch to his chin. Draco locked his jaw, defiant to the last.

Harry touched his wand to the outer edge of the bruise and murmured the incantation, watching as the colours leached away. He knew that it hurt, but not more than he could stand.

"Were you the one who fixed your own nose?" Draco asked casually, eyes trained on the ceiling. His hand gripped the edge of the table, belying the calm he was projecting.

"No, that was a friend." 

"They did a good job," he said. "I'm sorry about that, by the way. That was terribly rude of me."

"It's alright," Harry swallowed hard, wishing Draco would look at him, terrified of what would happen if he did. "Mine wasn't quite so straight as yours, to begin with." 

Harry's throat felt scratchy as he thought of Tonks, and by extension, of Teddy; of how he could lose his connection with his godson over pursuing whatever he was doing with Draco. How someone who'd thought like Draco, someone on _his side_ , was why Harry had an orphaned godson at all. 

Harry swiped at the newly healed skin with his thumb, revelling for a second too long at how smooth it felt. He recoiled as Draco’s eyes fluttered shut at the touch, afraid of the inevitable rebuke. It was an overstep, all this touching.

"All better," Harry said. They were far too close and breathing deeply from the exertion of the spell. He could smell Draco so keenly—sweet, fragrant oils reminiscent of hot summer days spent in orchards, earthy tobacco, and under that his smell—clean, masculine. 

"Do you want me to fetch you a mirror?"

Draco prodded at the place where moments ago, a fat black bag had been and shook his head.

"No need. Sorry to ruin the mood—we can still go—out, I mean. Now that I’m all fixed up and gorgeous again.” He gave Harry a little smile, but his eyes were pleading.

 _Don't make this weird_ , they said. Harry knew just how Draco felt because it was a look he'd given his friends a thousand times. _Just play along like everything is alright, and it will be._

“I don’t want to go out,” Harry said softly.

“Oh." Draco bit his lip, crestfallen. His long lashes grazed the tops of his cheekbones, and fuck if his wasn't the most beautiful face Harry had ever seen up so close. 

"I guess that’s my signal to be off, then." 

Harry stopped him from rising with a hand pressed flat at his chest. He could feel Draco's heartbeat thudding quickly beneath it.

“What are you doing?” Draco asked. He stared down at where Harry was touching him.

“Don't go yet,” Harry said as he pulled away, dropped his hand. 

“Why not?” Draco waited for an answer only a second before huffing. "You’re stalling, Potter. Spit it out.”

"Well—for starters, you haven't asked me truth or dare yet."

Draco leaned back and stared, his mouth slightly open. Harry’s heartbeat quickened under it. 

"What do you want, then?" he asked.

“Dare,” Harry answered without a thought. 

"Alright." Draco licked his lips. "I dare you to do whatever you want to me."

Harry’s thoughts stuttered to a stop. He tried to speak, but no words came to him. He cleared his throat and tried again. 

“What does that mean,” he said, though he knew precisely what it meant. He hadn’t stepped away, and Draco hadn’t looked away, and Harry knew deep in his gut that it was so much more than a look. It was an invitation.

“First thing that pops into your mind,” Draco’s eyes slid down to the low neck of Harry’s vest and back up again. He’d been caught staring before, and he wanted to keep looking, to see more. Harry could see that now. He took a deep breath through his nose, pushed it back out.

"Hit me. Kiss me. I don't care.” He swallowed, and Harry’s eyes followed the bob of his Adam’s apple, down his throat to where the faintest dusting of dark blonde hair was visible against the creamy white of his chest. “For fuck's Potter, just do _something_."

Harry was sure that in the silence of the room, his heartbeat was audible. That the thudding of it must be visible through his shirt.

“Come on,” Draco's voice was so soft yet pleading. He sucked in his bottom lip and let it go, watching Harry’s eyes flick to his mouth. “Where’s all that famous Gryffindor courage gone?” 

Harry balled his hands into fists, relaxed them. His courage had abandoned him now, the same way it did during anytime his mouth went dry, or his cock got hard. 

But want was a powerful driving force. He took a steadying breath and stepped closer to Draco, inches from his knees. 

He tapped one with a finger. “Wider, please.”

Draco spread his knees without hesitation, and it was on. 

This wasn’t talking, and they were so very far past flirting. This was admitting it.

This close, Harry could make out details he’d never noticed before. A tiny scar shaped like a hook, perhaps from shaving, colourless above Draco's lip. Shadows of black against the grey of his irises, like layers of marble. 

“I wanted to owl you,” Harry said quietly, “I wanted…"

Harry placed his hand to the crook of Draco’s jaw, cupping it. By the tempo of the vein thudding in his throat, Draco’s heart was speeding too, and that’s what it finally took. 

“What—” Draco went to speak, but his question was lost as Harry's eyes closed, and his lips landed first, stealing the words from his mouth. Eyelashes fluttered against his cheekbone, soft as a moth's wings as Draco seemed unsure as to whether he should close his eyes or not. He’d been caught by surprise and went stiff, the momentum Harry proceeded into the kiss with landing against an unmovable force. 

Harry pulled back a touch, waiting until he felt those eyelashes again. A tickle returned against his cheek, and then Draco did the craziest thing in the world. 

He kissed back. 

He leaned in, leading with firm lips. Harry could feel his magic swirling, prodding at his own. He could _taste_ it, like violets, just as strongly as the deep sweetness of dark cherry and the bitter tang of tonic on his probing tongue. Draco finished with a gentle bite at Harry’s bottom lip as he pulled away. 

Harry touched at his own lips, in awe. He must be dreaming. 

“You look surprised,” Draco said, leaning back, smiling.

“I am. This doesn’t feel real.” Harry placed his thumb in the dip between Draco's collarbones, just because he could. "I mean—I'm kissing Draco Malfoy."

The smile spread as Draco looked up at Harry from underneath his long lashes.

“I’m real,” he whispered. “Do it again.”

Harry moved first, hands grasping either side of Draco’s waist as Draco wrapped his arms around him, hands grabbing at his shoulders, his back. Harry’s ventured lower with a possessive squeeze that, well. Draco obviously didn’t hate it, groaning loudly into the touch. 

“Too hard?” Harry broke away to ask. 

“I won’t break," Draco sounded annoyed, "don’t lose your nerve on me now, Potter.”

Harry tightened his grip and pulled Draco towards him in one swift move, so they were touching tight from hip to hip and ground his cock into Draco’s. The sound of his soft exhalation was one that Harry wanted to commit to memory as he ground back.

When Draco curled a gloved hand into the thicket of hair at the back of Harry’s head and pulled gently, he was rewarded with a gurgling sound Harry didn’t even know he could make.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to pull your hair,” Draco growled as he repeated the motion, tugging hard enough to make Harry’s entire body shiver.

His right hand clutched Harry’s jaw, angling to better access his mouth. They kissed messily, as though starved for it. Harry’s lips were going to be raw tomorrow from rubbing against the sharp hairs of Draco’s five-o-clock shadow; Draco’s would probably feel the same. It was glorious. It was everything Harry had dreamed of, and more because it was real.

“You want more of that, don’t you,” Draco murmured, tugging gently again. 

“Do it any harder, and my knees might give out,” Harry said into lips that laughed at this admission. 

Draco pulled back, breathing heavily. He leaned on one hand and removed his grip from Harry’s hair to trace the contours of his face instead. His grey eyes followed the movements, enraptured. 

“I wouldn’t mind you on your knees,” he said after a beat, shimmying his shoulders out of his jacket. “Don’t go giving me ideas.”

“Make me.” The words slipped out. Harry felt high, giddy on the kiss. 

“Fuck, Potter,” Draco breathed, pulling Harry back in for more kissing and Harry had the distant thought that Draco might want this—be frightened by this but still _want_ it—just as hard as he did. It was a new thought to occur that someone he wanted might want him back every bit as badly. 

“What else do you like,” he said into Harry’s ear.

Harry couldn’t speak. Forming words was too much, so he moved instead. He kissed Draco's temple down to his jaw and neck, buying time. 

What did he want? He wanted to feel Draco’s skin hot against his own. He wanted to see him and smell him and, most of all, taste him. He wanted to touch every inch he could reach. To remove each layer that he’d used to cover up the marks he considered blemishes. What Harry wanted, more than anything, was to show Draco how beautiful he was. 

“Here,” he said at last, “let me.”

He took Draco’s right hand in his, stilling it. He popped the snap at the wrist to the glove, lowering one hand to grip Draco’s elbow and the other at his wrist. Harry leaned in to catch the top of his glove's thumb lightly between his teeth, maintaining eye contact all the while. He was rewarded by the surprised widening of Draco’s eyes when he nipped at the leather, pinching it between his teeth to loosen the sheath from the digit with a smooth pull upward. 

He continued with the next finger and the next, taking his time. His eyes wandered to the vein in Draco’s throat, filling and emptying at a dizzying rate. This heady mixture of want and fear that he felt; Draco was feeling it too. 

At last, he pulled the pinky finger up and slid the glove free from Draco’s hand, throwing it carelessly behind them. Its absence revealed pale skin, swatches shining waxy and pink in the low light. Harry kissed the palm first, smooth and dry, holding firm against the pressure of Draco pulling away. 

Harry’s cock pulsed inside his trousers. He was hard as a rock and wondered absently if one could pass out from being so aroused. 

“You like to please,” Draco murmured. 

"I guess," he said quietly. To be honest, he wasn't really sure what he'd liked. He'd never trusted anyone enough to experiment, and he'd never, ever, wanted someone the way he wanted Draco. Like his blood was on fire, like his skin was electrified by a simple touch.

Emboldened, he planted a kiss to the knobby bone of Draco’s wrist, gaining a surprised gasp from above. Undoing the buttons to his shirtsleeve, he flipped the hand over and planted a kiss at the pulse point where cyan veins flowed, tongue flicking out to taste the skin there. 

He stopped as Draco slid his hand, now freed of the glove, back around to swirl at the base of Harry’s neck. 

Harry buckled from the shudder elicited this time. When he opened his eyes, Draco’s smile was wide and wolfish, a sea of shining teeth. 

“What if you did the next one on your knees,” he said, and Harry immediately wanted it. His cock throbbed at the thought. He knew now that he wanted whatever it was that Draco wanted. Wanted to be good for him. 

“You'd like me to?” Harry asked.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t, Potter,” Draco replied, voice low and smooth. "Once I know that you fancy it, I won't ask anymore at all. I'll tell you if you want that."

“Okay,” Harry said. "I think I want that."

"Then get on your knees," Draco said simply, and Harry was pleased to oblige. He dropped to kneel on the floor, bringing him face level with Draco's pronounced bulge. He resumed the routine, pulling each finger of Draco's left glove free with his teeth until it too slid off. Draco loosened this sleeve for him and rolled it back, the Dark Mark revealed on his forearm—it hadn't dulled with time, not really. Harry reached up and covered it in his grip as he pulled the newly naked hand towards his mouth and kissed this palm. He sewed a line of caresses upwards until he was just below the Mark. Draco’s breath hitched as he did it.

“Potter,” he warned. 

"It's alright," Harry said. "I hate what it represents, but it doesn't matter anymore."

Draco frowned, breathing heavily. "Don't," he warned, but Harry was too gone. Harry met his eyes as his tongue snaked out for a testing lick of the blackened skin there. 

“Fuck,” Draco puffed the word out, watching Harry intently. Harry knew full-well that there was something foul about it, about _him_ doing _this_.

“I thought for a second there that you might burst into flames,” Draco said, voice dangerously low. It took a second, but the smile slowly spread across Harry's face, a smile he could allow himself, here. It was unlikely there was anyone else in the world he could joke about it with, who would dare make light of the Dark Mark like this.

“Voldemort can go fuck himself," Harry said, and Draco bit his lip, smiling back at him. "It tastes the same as your skin everywhere else."

“You haven’t tasted everywhere else,” Draco said. 

"Not yet," Harry said. The moment felt precipitous, like they were on the edge of a cliff, and Harry hoped that Draco would hold his hand when they jumped. 

“I’m only just getting started,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t got anywhere else to be.”

Draco’s smile faltered, confusion mingling with something else.

"What? Did I say something wrong?" Harry said. 

"Why aren’t you worried?” he asked. “About this?”

“Who says I’m not,” Harry replied, kissing his wrist. He shrugged one shoulder. “But I still want to. Do you?"

“Yes," Draco answered instantly. “Badly."

“Then stop worrying," Harry said. He tried to inject a surety into his voice that he didn’t feel as he went for the clasp of Draco's belt. “Let me help me you with this, and take off your top.”

Draco tutted him and swatted his hands away. 

"Scoot back," he said. Harry did, and Draco slid forwards to stand. He spread his legs wide, feet planted on either side of Harry's knees. Harry closed his eyes to hold on to a modicum of self-control. He wanted nothing more than to bury his face there. 

"Come now; you're so good with that mouth of yours. Show me what else you can do."

Above his head, Draco's hands were busy unbuttoning his shirt. Harry had never navigated undoing a belt with his teeth before but found it a welcome challenge. He managed to pull most of the leather strap free from the loop, but it wasn’t his most coordinated effort, even he could admit that. 

"How much have you had to drink?" Draco's question came through just as Harry was about ready to stop navigating the confusing world of belt-loops and just use his hands to rip his trousers open.

Harry sighed, rested his head on Draco's thigh. "Not nearly enough to not have my wits about how much I want to suck your cock," he said, and Draco laughed.

"Here, let me help you," he said, pulling the last of the leather out. It was after his button and fly were down that Harry realized that he was salivating. 

And there was something wrong with him; there had to be, the way his cock leaked when the Dark Mark was hovering within the field of his vision as Draco gently fisted his hair, his other hand pulling his cock free. Its tip was dark pink as he took it in his own fist and pumped the length a few times. When Draco's hand dipped lower to fondle his bollocks, Harry leaned forwards and nuzzled against the hard shaft, filled with pleasure at the silky feel of it bumping against his nose, the wet streak left where it brushed his cheek. He inhaled, his eyes sliding shut. 

“Fuck,” Draco said the word like it had two syllables. “You want that, huh?”

Harry made a sound and nodded, swallowing hard. “I do. I like hearing you say fuck,” he added, looking up at the long line of Draco's torso above him. 

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck _._ ” He spoke slowly, enunciating sharply. "You look so good like this Potter, do you know that?”

Pride suffused in Harry at his words of praise. He settled lower into his kneeling position, flattening his feet underneath him, and even though his ankles hurt from the stretch and his shoes dug into his arse, he didn’t care because it put him at a better angle for this, for Draco to give him what he wanted. 

“Let’s give you a taste,” Draco said. He gripped his cock at the base and directed it towards Harry’s mouth, a hand in Harry’s hair, keeping his head perfectly still. Harry thought he should probably feel ashamed at the groan that escaped him as he tasted Draco’s precome, warm and salty like seawater. Contentment settled over him when he pursed his lips around the head and tongued the slit, sucking gently, enraptured at this new experience—he'd never sucked a cock this long before. He wished he cared less about how thrilled Draco’s unabashed shudder made him.

“Gods, I’m never going to last; look at you.” Draco pulled Harry back by his hair, and he whined, which earned him a chuckle from Draco. 

"Listen to you, needy thing you are." The hand in his hair pulled him forwards again, his reward the slide of Draco’s prick deep into his mouth. Back and forth, slowly, Harry's lips stretching around his girth.

"That's it," Draco murmured as they fell into a rhythm, Draco’s grip eventually holding Harry’s head steady as he gently fucked his mouth. 

"Is this alright?" he asked, and Harry hummed his assent as best he could, eyes watering at the effort of sucking Draco’s cock without reprieve. The way Draco looked at him, Harry was only too happy to settle in and take it. Draco was being greedy, but also gentle, and Harry found the combination lethally arousing. He blinked away tears, and as his vision cleared, he looked up, wanting to hold Draco’s eyes but instead got to watch his chin jut towards the ceiling as his head fell back with a wanton groan. Harry remembered him—

_"This is me, pre-orgasmic—”_

—and he smiled as much as he could around the cock in his mouth, long and so perfectly straight, it was pornographic. It was better than he had remembered, even. Everything about Draco, somehow, was. 

"Oh, yes, gods, you're good; of course you're so good, aren't you, Potter." 

Draco couldn’t stop talking, even during sex. Maybe especially during sex. He muttered a never-ending litany of filth. 

“That fucking _mouth_ on you, what a good boy you are," he said, pushing further even as Harry's jaw screamed for a break, "I could fuck your mouth all day."

Harry decided it was okay for him to use his hands if it helped him to do this better. He steadied himself by gripping at Draco's thighs. He’d given plenty of blowjobs before and usually was careful to pull off and swallow his spit. To try not to make a mess. But this time was far from ordinary; Draco began pulling and pushing him by his hair, and Harry wanted it; he’d never known before how much he wanted it. He was trying so hard that he could barely breathe properly, and even as he was enjoying it, Harry thought he must be really, truly broken. He knew he was wrong because as his spit overflowed and coated his chin, and when he felt it dripping down his throat and soaking into the neckline of his vest, he could only imagine wanting it this way from now on.

Being used like this. To be dirty, sucking and gagging with the sweetest yet filthiest things being whispered, just for him. Only for him. To be a slut for someone who appreciated it. Who loved, if not him, at least what he could give them. And who better than Draco to give him that?

He coughed, choking as the head of Draco's cock kept hitting the entrance to his throat, and Draco finally pulled him off.

“Alright?” he asked. Harry’s glasses had gone crooked, and he swiped them off, throwing them to the ground with a clatter as he nodded up to Draco emphatically.

"Yes," he croaked. "More."

“Look at you, gagging for it so beautifully. Again, then,” Draco said. He pushed back in, and Harry took him deeply, so deep that his nose nestled in the short thatch of dark blonde hair at the base as Draco held him there. Harry was glad to have his desire to inhale Draco’s scent—clean sweat and the scent of almonds that must be his soap. Draco held him so long that Harry started genuinely struggling to breathe, his body gagging out the intrusion even as his mind tried to make it work. 

Draco pulled Harry free at last. Harry gasped for breath, weaving on his knees. “Show me how much you like this,” Draco said, “let me see you now; I want you to touch yourself.”

Harry had barely noticed his own hard-on this whole time, though the wet patch on the crotch of his jeans attested to his cock's interest in the proceedings. He fumbled with his zipper as Draco gripped him by the jaw and cleaned his chin with a sure swipe of his thumb. Draco swiped that same thumb over the scar on Harry’s forehead like he was checking to see if he could wipe it off too. He held it there without asking, a place no one else dared touch, and Harry's eyes rolled back in his head of their own accord.

“You like that, do you?” Draco said, and Harry answered with a nod. These little touches made him feel owned somehow. Draco touched him like he wasn't in charge, not famous, not powerful. Just a man with scars. The feeling of being treated with an everyday sort of reverence was clearing away all his usual anxieties as he palmed himself carefully through the fabric of his pants. 

“Come on, Potter, I want to see you,” Draco said. 

Harry pulled his cock free of the top elastic band of his y-fronts to the sharp intake of Draco's breath from above. 

“Of course you’ve got a fat cock,” he said, sounding somehow bored and angry and interested at the same time. “Look at you. I’ve been neglecting you.”

"I'm close," Harry rasped, throat raw. Draco made a wounded sound as he watched Harry slide his cock through his loose fist, his breath catching with every downwards pull of his foreskin over the head. He had to stop moving and did nothing more than grip tightly around the base for fear that he’d come in seconds from his own hand. 

"Incredible," Draco said, sounding genuine now. "I bet you're gorgeous when you come. But I’ll be honest, I’m not going to have any manners about it tonight. Me first."

Harry wet his lips, staring up into Draco’s eyes. He used only the tip of his tongue to lick up the stream of precome waiting for him, and Draco couldn’t stop making sounds now, a deep groan escaping him. Harry sucked on with relish, bobbing his head up and down, swallowing as much of his prick as he could.

"Mmm, yes, fuck, that's all for you, _Christ_ , your mouth—“ 

Draco started to thrust, and Harry could tell he was close as he became unintelligible, his movements frantic. It was all so good; Harry closed his eyes and sucked, his jaw aching with the effort, but it was worth it, it was all worth it for the sounds Draco made, small and desperate grunts with each slide into his mouth. Into him, for him. He pulled at his own cock experimentally a few times, careful to stave off his own orgasm as long as he could as Draco's words turned to gibberish above him.

"I'm—God, fuck, fuck, Potter, I'm going to come, I'm—" was all Draco managed, one palm squeezing almost painfully into his shoulder, the other cupping the back of Harry's head as he thrust into his mouth a final time, spilling onto the back of his tongue with a groan that went on and on. Harry dutifully swallowed the first mouthful of come and pulled away, keeping his tongue locked under the head, painting his lips as the spurts slowed. Draco’s groan continued until he was spent and panting, slowing to a stop. He watched with shameless want as Harry’s tongue flicked out for an experimental lick of his lips. Harry sat back onto his aching feet as he caught his breath, finally pulling up his vest to wipe his face clean.

"Merlin, Potter. How is it you, you..." Draco looked at him reverently, his face dopey and soft. "You should see yourself. You look like sex incarnate.”

Harry laughed, deep and throaty. 

“Um, thanks?”

“That was, that was..." Draco leaned back, propped up on his elbows. "Fuck, I don't know what that was.” His cock was still hard and bobbed as he laughed too, looking down at Harry with something like affection. Harry’s heart swelled.

“I take it that I did a good job, then?" Harry asked, resting his damp temple on Draco’s thigh. 

Draco’s smile grew wider than Harry had ever seen it. “You did _amazing_ ,” he said as he finally gazed down at Harry’s lap.

“And you still haven't come. Get up here,” Draco said, extending a hand to pull Harry up.

Harry took the hand, feeling as though he’d done something wrong. He was always doing the wrong thing, wasn’t he? He was too strange, that's why it wouldn't work; it never worked with him and anybody, not for long. But for some reason, his strange only seemed to amuse Draco, who made the disgruntled sound of sucking his teeth as he began pulling at Harry's erection, and leaned forwards so that they were pressed forehead-to-forehead, both sets of eyes cast downwards.

"Look at your prick; it's absolutely gorgeous, like the rest of you," Draco whispered. He spat in the palm of his free hand, wrapping the long set of his fingers around Harry’s shaft. Harry hissed, wanting to pull away. It was too much. He couldn’t handle this, he was going to embarrass himself, but he couldn’t escape, trapped now as Draco's other hand ventured lower to cup his bollocks. There was nowhere to go but through.

“I shouldn’t have left you on your knees so long—just look at what I was missing.” Draco pressed his sweat-soaked temple to Harry’s, whispering directly into his ear as he pulled and pulled, so slowly it was killing Harry. His thighs shook with the effort of holding him up—he was so fucking _close_ , if he could just get a speck more friction or speed or _something,_ he could finally come. 

“Faster, please,” Harry pled. Draco stopped completely.

“And here I was, thinking I’d make this last,” he said, teasing the underside of Harry's prick with the slide of only his middle finger. 

"Draco," Harry whined. "Please, I need—"

"Hold your horses," Draco said, huffing a laugh. "God, I love hearing you beg, though." 

He started again, slow, agonizingly slow. He massaged Harry’s balls as they pulled up tight against his body, and Harry had never known pleasure like this. It was unstoppable, this feeling, watching the spit-slicked fingers gripping at his cock, dark and thick, the head a fat red stopper nearly completely revealed from his foreskin at the end of each of Draco’s pulls. He increased the pace little by little, adding his thumb to slide over the head as Harry made little sounds with each exhale.

“I can’t,” Harry said, hands trembling as he held onto Draco’s shoulders.

“Yes, you can, and I’m going to watch,” Draco growled. 

“I can’t, fuck, Draco, please,” Harry grit his teeth, the stirrings of his oncoming orgasm building deep inside him. 

"I wonder what sounds you’ll make,” Draco said right before he nipped at Harry's neck, and that was it—Harry came so hard and suddenly that it surprised even him. His shout echoed in the empty room as his hips jerked involuntarily, and Draco pulled him through it, Harry’s hot come painting stripes on his pale chest from his collarbones to his navel.

Harry closed his eyes as he rode out the last of his orgasm, the slide of Draco's hand slowing, and suddenly everything felt so dirty. There he was, stood in his kitchen, his come all over Draco, who at any minute was surely going to laugh and say thanks, crack a joke about how that was fun, how it was a mistake. 

The lines between Dream Draco and Real Draco were blurring. Dream Draco looked at him and said, _No one can know about this_. Harry knew that they couldn’t again, and every second he stood there, leaning against Draco for support was another second Draco would use to humiliate him, and Harry would be left with that cheap feeling, a hollowing out in his stomach and—

The kiss was a surprise. It was soft and slow, and the thoughts that buzzed like bees in Harry’s mind quietened until there was nothing left of their usual din. Draco's hands twined in his hair as he deepened it. They hadn’t quite got the rhythm yet, teeth clacking together on more than one occasion. Harry stopped worrying about where to place his hands and let them go where they wanted, one at Draco’s impossibly small waist, the other at his shoulder. It was a kiss that went on and on, and it was Draco who eventually pulled away.

"Well,” he said, at last, drawing a finger through a streak of come on his chest. “That was interesting."

Harry snorted. “That’s the best you’ve got. Interesting?"

"Yes, I stand by it. Interesting. Could you?" 

He gestured vaguely at himself, and Harry understood even through the post-sex fugue that was fast setting in that he was asking for some sort of fluid-banishing charm. Harry had never bothered to learn them properly but figured it was close enough to _Tergeo_. He closed his eyes and thought about the intention of the spell, trying his spin on it non-verbally. He opened them to Draco, beaming at his suddenly clean chest and hand.

“Oh, brilliant,” Harry said, impressed with himself. 

"That's incredible,” Draco added in a tone of wonder. 

Harry cocked a brow. "I thought I was a show-off."

"You're still an insufferable show-off and a prat on top of it, but that doesn’t make your little tricks any less amazing.” Draco frowned, his nose wrinkling up like that of a bunny, adding, “If you tell anyone I said that, I'll hex you into the new year." 

“You saying that while sat half-naked in my kitchen takes a lot of the bite out of your bark.”

"You’d be careful not to underestimate me, especially when I'm naked,” Draco said. He pulled away to tuck himself back into his pants and zip up his jeans. Harry did the same, rising up on the table to lay back on it. A moment later, Draco mirrored his position, lying at his side. 

“I’m surprised at you,” Draco said after they passed a minute in silence, their breaths slowing in the warm air.

“What, you thought I was too dull to figure out sucking cock or something?” Harry asked, eyes closed. He was rewarded for his cheek with a none-too-soft shove to his shoulder. 

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at you being naturally gifted at anything anymore,” Draco said with a sigh. He let his hand linger, trailing the backs of his nails over Harry's forearm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. 

“Was that a compliment?” Harry asked. His heart rate picked up once more from the touch, from just a _touch_ , even after what they’d done, Harry was still going dizzy over the little things. He felt thirteen again.

“Don’t go digging for more now, Potter; you’ve had your fill for the day. I meant that I’m surprised that you—I mean, I didn’t—” Draco huffed, unable to find the words. “I didn’t think you could possibly be…” Draco trailed off again into silence.

“Possibly be what?” Harry asked the ceiling. He stared at the chandelier, worry closing his throat. He would suffocate, talking to Draco like this. Intimately.

“Interested,” Draco said, slowly, "in me. This way, I mean.”

“In hooking up with you?”

Harry looked over and caught the moment when Draco stilled, and if Harry knew him any better, he’d be sure that he registered hurt in the brief narrowing of his eyes. Or derision. Perhaps he took offence to the word _hooking up_ , barmy, pureblood sod that he still was.

“Yeah,” he said, casting his eyes at the ceiling. “I know I’m probably the most scintillating conversation you have any given week, but—”

"What do you mean?"

"Come off it, Potter. I'm me; you're you. We couldn’t—"

"I think we just did,” Harry said, turning slightly to watch Draco’s reaction. 

He bit his lips. His face was still flushed, spots of pink high on his cheeks and tiny pinpricks of sweat on the bridge of his nose. He was so goddamn beautiful, and Harry knew as he was thinking these thoughts that he was so, so _fucked._

"I wasn’t going to say that. You know what I mean," Draco said. By his tone, Harry knew that jokes wouldn't be invited in response now.

"I know," Harry replied. His eyelids were growing heavy. The lassitude of the drinks still flowing in his veins, the lack of dinner, and the mind-shattering orgasm layered on top of one another. He closed his eyes, yielding to the feeling. 

“You know how sometimes,” Harry asked, "it’s hard to be you all day?"

“I'd hardly put being me and being you in the same category, exactly, but yes. I think I do,” Draco replied drily. 

“It’s tiring, isn’t it,” Harry said. As he relaxed his arm rolled over, and he could feel the hairs at the back of his hand brush with Draco’s. They were so close; he wanted to take Draco’s hand. The urge swelled in him, but he found that he couldn’t do it. As he pulled his hand away and placed it on his stomach, he felt more like a coward than he ever had before.

But it was the smart thing to do. He never did the smart thing, but Draco'd asked him to try, time and time again. 

Because Draco Malfoy didn’t want to hold hands with him. Him with his bad hair, lack of worldly experience, insipid thoughts. Him—

“ _So, ugh, new—_ ”

—as Draco had once put it. At navigating whatever this was. Perhaps Draco wanted to pull, sure. He was interested enough in Harry to fuck his mouth, but that hardly qualified the two of them to what—go on a date? Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter? They lead abysmally cut-off lives from anything resembling normal. Neither of them had much of an opportunity to meet new people, let alone nice, normal people. Who in their position wouldn't want a quick fuck—especially a discrete fuck—when they could get it? 

Harry had to remind himself that they were barely friends, still perched on a fragile ledge from having to be enemies for so long. Draco wasn’t looking for someone to hold his hand or ask him out to dinner. Especially when that someone was him. Was Harry. 

Would hurt him, one way or another, in the long run.

Harry winced, remembering Draco'd blackened eye.

 _It's not a matter of if you'll hurt him_ , Harry thought _, it's when you will again. You already have, and you still had him stay because you're weak, and you're selfish. If you cared at all, you'd have kicked him out._

“It can be,” Draco replied, after a long while. “Tiring, that is. All I’m looking for is a way to keep my work placement and finish my thesis in peace. If I keep my head down and make it through the probationary period, I can't be sacked without due cause. If I’m fortunate and flog myself in public long enough, donate enough, apologize profusely enough, maybe I’ll be given a chance to drag my name out of the mud, and why am I telling you all this?” 

Draco shook himself, breaking the spell. His hair remained up in a knot gone messy, long tendrils having fallen free. 

"You don’t care about my work,” he said, hiding a yawn. At last, he propped himself up on the table to look down at Harry. Loose hair framed his face, his lips full and puffy from their frantic kissing. Harry wanted to pull him down for another round, desperately, but he quelled the thought.

“I'll see you?" Draco asked. He was either going for nonchalant and succeeding or was genuinely unbothered, and Harry was fucked if he was meant to be able to tell the difference. 

Harry wanted to correct him and say that he did care about Draco’s work. Or at least, he could. He really desperately wanted to. He wanted to admit that he was interested to see where this could go. He wanted more kissing, so much more kissing of Draco’s mouth. He wanted to be shamelessly pliant under his hands. Harry knew that he wanted more with Draco than he’d wanted or experienced with any of the nameless men he’d fumbled around with before. 

But that was the sex talking, that’s what it was, and it was all too soppy and silly. Harry was going to have to stuff anything resembling what a Hufflepuff would do down somewhere deep and preferably incinerate it if he wanted to do more of this. Whatever _this_ was, now.

"Sure," he said, attempting casualness and hoping beyond hope that he succeeded. "I mean, yeah, of course. Uh, Sunday, next week. The Cannons are playing, and the Games and Sports lot are hosting a luncheon. Ron and I are going.” He stretched leisurely, catching Draco’s eyes as they darted down to where his vest had risen up from his trousers. The horny bugger. Of course that was all he wanted. "You’ll be going to Ministry do’s now, yeah?"

Harry turned his head to read the look on Draco’s face. He didn’t even blink. A curt nod, lips pressed together was all Harry got in response before he was up on his feet.

“Next Sunday, then,” Draco said, his fingers making quick work of his shirt buttons. “Is that your literal social calendar?”

The question threw Harry off-kilter. He realized too late that the calendar Victoria had sent over was indeed still stuck to the wall behind them.

“Er, yeah.”

Draco squinted at it a moment before nodding. 

“Perhaps when our calendars align, you and I could skive off early every so often. You know, when our paths cross.”

“For more fucking?” Harry tried and failed to make these words seem natural. Draco threw him a disgusted look as he fixed his shirt back properly across his shoulders. 

“I know I’m the toff and all, but I was going to say fooling around. Who says ‘for more fucking’? That’s disgusting, Potter, have some couth.”

“I just wanted to hear you say ‘fuck’ again,” Harry said. Draco gave him a coy look as he smoothed his hair back.

“You think that’s clever, do you?” He sighed, looking Harry over. “You think _I’m_ clever. You said so earlier.” He was doing the thing again, where he spoke to himself in Harry's presence. Harry thought it was funny, because if it wasn't funny, it was absolutely mad. Even though he was staring directly at Harry, he looked right through him.

"What am I doing?” Draco asked himself, eyes wide. “With you?”

“Am I supposed to answer that?” Harry asked, stomach squirming.

“No. Shut up, and let me think.” Draco looked around the room, back to Harry, eyes darting everywhere. "My being seen talking to you will do wonders for my name. So that goes in the ‘plus’ column. And you clearly need education in basically everything; you’re appalling. So seeing me is of benefit to you,” he added.

“So that’s a yes, then,” Harry said, holding back a grin. “Sunday. Do you want, like, a copy?” Harry gestured at the calendar with a jut of his chin, scratching the back of his neck as it flared with the burn of another ill-timed blush. 

“No need, I've committed it to memory. I’ll check my Pensieve later,” Draco responded. He didn’t so much as glance at Harry again. He was a flurry of energy, summoning his jacket and gloves and throwing them on in a rush. 

_He can't get out of here fast enough_ , Harry thought, his seditious heart sinking.

“Oh. Okay."

Everything felt a bit off all of a sudden, but Harry didn’t know how to right it. He wasn't entirely sure where he went wrong; what it was he said that had earned him this cold shoulder. If it was a cold shoulder. Maybe this was all entirely within the realm of normal for Draco, a man who felt no shame in telling him to _get out_ of his flat.

"Decide what it is you want to be done next I’m here, then,” Draco said as he patted his pockets. Finding everything in order, he turned to go. 

“Could do with a bathroom remodelling,” Harry joked. “So, this is how you’ll pay me back then?” Harry continued. “You clear your debt to me with your company, and getting this old house to like me?”

Draco stopped moving, hand hovering with a pinch of silvery Floo powder midair. He was facing away from Harry, so he couldn’t make out his expression. 

“Look at you, learning.” He turned back to face Harry. The mask was back in place, that faintly amused and bored look he put on to cover up whatever else he might be thinking or feeling. “Getting the house to like you is a periphery benefit, not unlike how you tolerating me in public benefits my social standing."

"I don't tolerate you," Harry blurted. Draco raised an eyebrow at him, and he struggled to find the right words. "I—er. I think I like you, even if you are a git."

"The feeling's mutual," Draco added with a wry twist of his lips. "You’ll have the basic understanding of gainful economic agreements a Slytherin first-year holds by the end of the month if we keep this up. Bye, Potter,” he said, throwing a hand up in a little wave before tossing the powder into the flames and stepping into the roaring green of the grate, suddenly gone.

"Goodbye, Draco,” Harry waved at the empty grate.

“What in the world have I done," he asked the room at large. The shutters under the credenza rattled in response. He dropped into a chair, noticing that Draco had forgotten his sunglasses, and a smile stole across his lips.

"What in the world am I doing?"

* * *

 **Notes** :

I'll admit, I wrote this months ago, and it's one of my favourite chapters to revisit. I hope you enjoyed it too!

I love reading your comments, please keep them coming! 

Next chapter by **Friday, October 16**.

xx


	8. Pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys catch a Quidditch match, Harry gets a pet name, and Kreacher is less than impressed.

* * *

**Sunday, September 28, 2003**

It was only mid-afternoon, but Harry’s eyelids drooped with exhaustion. As he climbed the last set of stairs to the Ministry box, he seriously considered giving in and Apparating home for a little kip. All it would take was one interaction with a fan, one, _"Isn’t it a touch early to take retirement?"_ joke, and he’d have to pack it in. He was too tired to fake smiling today. 

Luckily, the scene upon his arrival was subdued—most Ministry employees wouldn't show up for another hour, and he'd called in a favour to ensure that his name was lacking from the guest list, so no flashbulbs greeted him. 

He liked being in the Ministry boxes at Ipswich Pitch. They weren’t fancy or unique. Well-worn wooden bleachers smoothed by decades of hosting arses in wool and twill raised up from the field, and the smell of freshly cut grass and manure permanently scented the air. Built in the seventies in the spitting image of the pitch at Hogwarts—save for the boxes, which were the work of wizarding space and buckets of galleons—it was the familiarity of the thing that endeared it to him. He was glad to order a lager and chips, nod politely at a few newly minted Aurors he’d gone through training with, and take his meal to a corner table to tuck in, in peace. 

He tried to, at least. Drowning his chips in vinegar, he managed a few controlled bites but found them turning to sour paste in his mouth. He balked at the concept of eating a meal's worth. 

It was partially nerves about what he was doing there, about the clandestine meeting he’d arranged with Draco, but it was more than that. He’d been on edge and unable to eat since the excruciating meal at the Weasley's house the night previous. 

He'd avoided the family through all of September, and it was a note from Maude's Mailing Service that they'd begun receiving howlers from Molly Weasley on his behalf that had finally pushed him out of Grimmauld and over to the Burrow. Harry knew things weren't going to be easy when he arrived to Molly greeting him at the door and asking if she could take his jacket, as though he hadn’t thrown it over the bannister along with Ron’s for over a decade. She was retreating into cold formality, and he didn't know what to do with it. 

"It's all right there, Molly," he said, wrapping her in a tight hug. "You've still got at least six other chances at grandkids."

He took comfort in the familiar scent of her hair and the way she squeezed him back and thought for a moment that his attempt at a joke would break the tension, but that had quickly given way to constricting anxiety as she pulled away on the verge of tears, lips smashed shut in a tight line. 

_Fuck_ , he thought, _she's thinking of Fred, you idiot, don't make her count her children. You don't belong here; you shouldn't have come—_

Harry scrambled to cover for the gaffe. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said. Molly shook her head. She hadn't left the room bawling, so Fred likely wasn't the cause of her pained expression.

"Not that I might not still have kids, because I might, I just—I mean, I haven't really thought that far ahead.” Harry threw a look at Ron for a lifeline. "Erm. Molly? Say something? I—I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I—I've stuck my foot in it now." The urge to cry bubbled up within him, though he couldn't; he was afraid that he'd have to bolt if she kept looking at him like that. 

Molly made a little sobbing noise, and Harry widened his eyes, though Ron only held his hands up, defeated before he'd even joined in on Harry's behalf. 

"Yeah, mum, don't be glum," Ron said from the stairs, "Harry's not any better at dating blokes than he was with girls anyway." 

"Oh, very helpful, Ron, thank you," Harry said acidly. He should have gone to Hermione for aid broaching the subject—Molly liked her, listened to her, but she was busy working on a case and had to go into the office, wouldn’t make it over until after dark. 

"What? It's true," Ron said, enjoying himself far too much for Harry's liking. "He's still single. You're still single, aren't you?”

Molly turned to face her son, who was stuck sitting on the stairs due to a very cranky Crookshanks attached to his lap. His arms bore the long scratches of his attempts to extricate himself from her claws.

“Don’t be rude, Ronald,” she said. 

Ron shrugged and settled in, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. The beginnings of a proper beard were coming in, no longer the boyish wisps they'd clung to as teenagers. 

“You can torment him by trying to set him up with the boring sons of family friends now. The way I see it, basically nothing's changed.”

"We'd hoped to walk you down the aisle, is all," Molly said. Her voice was watery, and Harry found her couldn’t look at her, stared instead at his shoes. "You know. Take the place of your parents at your wedding."

 _You’re my parents now,_ he wanted to say, _and you're upset with me._ He’d never imagined coming out to be difficult with the Weasleys, but that was the naïveté talking. _Maybe this is what having parents is like—being a disappointment and living with that guilt._

Ginny's characteristic scoff carried down the stairs. Harry hadn’t seen her come in, but his stomach did a hopeful swoop upon hearing her. She sat a few steps up from Ron and picked through a handful of every flavour beans even as she addressed Molly. 

"Mum, are you actually being serious? How many weddings are you and Dad planning to pay for?"

"It's not that," Molly said, pulling Harry’s jacket from the bannister and worrying it in her hands. Harry was terrified for a moment that she’d hand it to him and ask him to leave. 

"Well, stop making Harry feel bad about something he can't do anything about, then." She knocked back a handful of tropical-looking beans, chewing for a moment before smiling. A safe batch—she was uncannily good at avoiding the disgusting ones. The look she gave Harry was apologetic, and her warm brown eyes made it easy to remember how things had been straightforward with her, even if they’d lacked that spark of intimacy. He missed her, or rather the closeness which had been lost, in moments like this. 

"It's not Harry's fault he can't get married." 

Harry hadn't anything to say to that. His face got caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

"As long as you're all healthy," Arthur interrupted loudly, entering and patting Molly on the shoulder, and that was the last anyone spoke directly on the subject all night. Between Harry and George, they killed an entire bottle of good bourbon during the unusually long silences during the meal, unusual that there were any at all. Harry balled up a fist under the table and worked his thumbnail into his pointer finger, trying to break the skin. By dessert, he was rewarded with the warm, wet feeling that let him know he’d been successful—he healed the wound soundlessly, the only evidence the greying of his face from the pain. 

When it came time for everyone to say their goodbyes, George waved at Harry from the door and walked out. Usually jovial in Harry's presence, this was beyond cold—a frozen shoulder. Harry couldn’t tell if George was disgusted, angry, or disappointed, but worse, he couldn’t tell which of those options was best. Angelina awkwardly patted Harry's back, her face a portrait of second-hand embarrassment.

"He'll come round, Harry," she'd said.

Harry hated that idea—that he had to be patient for other people to _come around_ to how he lived his life, to the very notion of his romantic partners. As though they’d earned themselves a right to have a say. But he swallowed that anger down, went home to stew, and finally to pass out. 

Typically, that much brown liquor was his ticket to a black, empty sleep, void of dreams. As luck would have it, though, even sleep went poorly. When he finally dozed off, it had been to the nightmare of Cedric, his skin damp and cold against Harry's body. His corpse fell heavily upon Harry when the Portkey slammed them back to the centre of the school's festivities, and in this nightmare, the weight of him grew, steadily crushing Harry into the mud. No matter how much he screamed or clawed, nobody came to his rescue, and the body always rolled back when he just nearly pushed it off, his Sisyphean task. It became so heavy that he could clearly hear his ribs cracking under it. He woke up screaming, and this was how his day began. It was the reason he arrived bleary-eyed and grumpy, early, to his appointment in Wales with his biographer, only to be snapped by the paparazzi looking hollow-eyed and haggard. Harry wasn't so oblivious as to realize that this meant that they knew his schedule, at least some of it, and that meant his life was going to become more public and, therefore, more difficult in the months to follow.

The book was a real thing now. At least he had that. He pulled a galley copy from his breast-pocket and restored it to its standard size. Cracking its spine for the first time, he decided now was as good a time as any to thumb through it. He would read it cover-to-cover in the weeks to come, but he was content to drop in at random to see what the many drafts, interviews, and phials of memories had conjured on the page so far. If nothing else, it gave him ample reason to keep from anxiously scanning the crowd for the anticipated flash of white hair.

He'd lost track of time when a raucous laugh from the far side of the room jostled him back to the present. He hadn't noticed as the bar had filled with families, the smell of tobacco wafting in from the balcony as older employees puffed at their pipes. Harry was halfway through his recollections of Snape's death, dread turning his stomach to ice, and when he looked up from the pages, he'd half expected to be back on Hogwart's lawns. 

_You're here, now, you're awake, and you're safe. You're at Ipswich Pitch, and the year is 2003, and you're safe._ He looked down to the suds of his lager to reconcile where he was in time and space, touched his fingertips together to anchor himself to the now and noticed that they were tacky and black, the still-damp ink having smudged as he turned the pages. Dragging his eyes around the crowd for the first time in many minutes, away from the distress of the story— _his_ story—suddenly, there he was. Draco, gripping the banister as he took the last few stairs, his eyes sweeping the room and locking onto Harry's.

Harry froze at the look. He hadn't planned for anything other than literally seeing Draco. Hadn't even figured as to whether they'd stay to watch the match or not.

 _Go to the luncheon; see Draco._ That was the whole point for Harry. He'd been longing for just a look at him.

And damn, what a sight he was. Harry watched as he shucked a standard black travelling robe to hang at the entrance, revealing tight black jeans, low riding boots, perfectly shined, and a muted Tattersall jumper of greys and browns. It was his thing, Harry supposed, to ride the line between wizard and Muggle fashion, looking every bit the Muggle as soon as his outer robes came off, and it did something to Harry to see his willowy frame in tight clothing. Robes hardly did anything for a person's figure.

It was as Harry was musing on the benefits of a pair of tight jeans paired with Draco's pert arse that he looked up to his face and noticed an eyebrow, arched. Warning.

Because he’d been staring. The entire time, he'd been staring; however long that was, he had no earthly clue.

He swallowed and looked down at his book, flipping through random pages as his cheeks burned. 

When he looked up, Draco was nowhere to be seen. 

"Fuck," Harry muttered under his breath. He abandoned the table to get another pint and struck up a conversation with Susan Bones as they waited in line. Shaking the hand of her boyfriend as they made their introductions, Harry could tell from his wide eyes that the man was positively dumbstruck that _The_ Harry Potter had touched him, and it was just as the need to escape overcame him that he felt a tap at his shoulder.

"Potter?"

He turned to Draco, looking at him expectantly.

"Draco," Harry said dumbly. He took a steadying sip of his drink as his mind went blank, and Susan did a double-take of the two of them.

 _"Malfoy,"_ she spluttered, "what are you doing here?” She turned to Harry, eyes nervously flicking over at Draco. “Harry, is he bothering you?"

Harry opened his mouth to respond but found that he didn't have the words to do so. Draco smiled graciously, giving the impression of a shark that has caught some likely looking prey in its sights. 

"Susan Bones, good to see you too. I work for the Ministry now, Department of International Magical Cooperation. Potter here," Draco clapped Harry's shoulder, letting his hand linger with implied friendliness, "invited me along. I'm his guest today."

"You're his what?" Susan asked, looking to Harry for confirmation. Harry nodded, making a garbled sound. He cleared his throat as Draco looked at him, arms crossed and face amused.

"Care to try that again, Potter? Maybe this time with words?"

"Er, yeah. We—"

"Ran into each other over the summer. Figured that we ought to try to bury the wand, so to speak.” Draco turned his sparkling smile on Harry, his eyes telecasting mischief. “Potter's magnanimous like that."

"Well, I wouldn't—" Harry started, but Draco frowned and waved him off.

"Come now, Potter, everyone knows it. You've got a heart two sizes too big. Doesn't he, Susan?"

"He...does..." Susan tried, poorly, to cover her shock at the situation. Draco removed his hand from Harry's shoulder and offered it to Susan's boyfriend, whose name Harry had forgotten as soon as he's said it.

"Hello, I'm Draco Malfoy," he said, holding his hand aloft. Susan's boyfriend—Mulligan? Mitchell?— looked at it as though it were covered in pus.

"I know exactly who you are," he said gruffly, his thin top lip pulled back with disdain. Draco’s smile didn’t falter for a moment as he withdrew his hand and put it in his pocket, easy as could be. 

"Right, then. Fantastic. Then you'll know all about what a right little twat I was through our formative years. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

"Marcus," he said. Harry scoffed, nearly letting out an _"Of course!"_. He covered with a cough when Draco shot him a look that told him to shut up in no uncertain terms.

"Brilliant, Marcus, well. This goes for you too, Bones—let me start by offering my deepest apologies for my past behaviour.” Draco paused, and his demeanour switched from affable to contrite so quickly that it seemed impossible that it was sincere, but if Draco was faking it, Harry couldn’t tell. 

“I can tell you that I am not the person now that I was back then, and if there's anything in particular that you wish to hash out with me, I'm available, anytime." Draco paused again, leaving space for them to react, and Harry took a look at their companion's faces. To say that they were speechless would be an understatement. Susan's mouth literally hung open, her jaw attempting to find a spot to rest against her throat. And perhaps he was simple, or maybe his cock's wants had gone to his head, bit he understood then what Hermione had meant when she said that Draco's apology seemed genuine. It was nothing short of shocking to watch in real-time because he seemed so sincere.

"I hear you're doing great things over in Magical Transport, by the way, Bones. I hope one day you'll feel confident in saying similar things about me over in the TSB—Trading Standards Body, that's my office. Medicinal potions are my specialty. Do let me know if you ever have a question I might be able to help with. Now," Draco turned his attention to Harry at last, and Harry froze anew. He felt as though he were about to be asked for the answer to a quiz he hadn't studied for, "I did come by to bother Potter here about a pair of sunglasses I've misplaced. I'm rather attached to them. You did bring them?"

Harry shook his head slowly, catching on.

"Shoot—I'm sorry," he said. "I know I said I'd bring them to Bagman's. We could—apologies, Susan—a pleasure to meet you, Marcus—" the couple stared in silent disbelief as he took Draco's elbow and led him over to his deserted table. "We could nip by mine after the match, and I could give them to you," Harry continued, loudly enough that anyone who'd been eavesdropping could hear.

"Sure," Draco said, taking the bench-seat to Harry's left. He took a deep, steadying breath and let it go. 

"Good to see you, Potter," he said once they were sat, giving Harry a private little smile. It was quick, but it made Harry feel like he was flying. Or falling off a cliff. Maybe both.

"Likewise," Harry said gruffly, his best attempt at friendly-but-not-overly-so conversation. 

_Good, keep going. Stop mooning over him for half a second and breathe; this is just Draco—just Malfoy. Don't make a fool of yourself._

"You have," Draco said, motioning to Harry's nose, "something on your face."

"What? Where?" Harry said.

Draco touched his own cheekbone, dragged the finger down to the corner of his mouth, and then along his jaw.

"There, and there, and well. Sort of all over it, to be honest. You look like an errant quill has attacked you."

"Oh, for fucks sake, it's the ink from my book. _Scourgify_ ," Harry said, wincing his eyes closed as the spell scoured his face clean, the scent of lavender and lemons briefly filling the air. "Susan couldn't have told me that once, the entire time we were talking?" he grumbled.

 _"My book,"_ Draco mocked him in his spot-on impersonation. He picked up a sodden chip and sniffed it. "Don't be so hard on Bones. Who in the world has the gall to tell Harry Potter he's got something on his face?" he asked distractedly, dropping the chip back into the basket and poking the whole thing across the table.

"You, apparently,” Harry said. Draco’s frown turned to something else as he looked briefly mortified. 

“What now?" Harry asked.

"Nothing, nothing," Draco responded. "Let's start again. Hi." He smiled warmly. "How are you?"

The normalcy of the words took Harry aback. This wasn't how they spoke to one another, not at all.

"Er, fine, thanks.”

Draco raised a brow and settled back into his seat, his incredulous _R_ _eally, now?_ all but implied. 

“Well, not fine," Harry grudgingly admitted. He usually stopped after _fine_ ; how he felt was his problem, and it wouldn’t be proper of him to go sharing his feelings anytime he was asked, would it? But this was Malfoy—Draco—and there weren't rules for whatever it was that they were doing. What could it hurt if he told the truth? What would Draco care, and better still—who would he tell?

Harry raked a hand through his hair, finding odd knots in some of the wilder curls.

"Honestly, I slept like shit and woke up yelling, which is never great.” 

Harry noted that Draco kept his face perfectly straight at this statement, which suggested he was trying not to react, which meant that he _was_ reacting, only internally.

“Is that typical?”

Harry shrugged, trying to minimize the statement. “Not often,” he lied, thinking of the _Muffliato_ he’d become used to casting over his room before sleep, to keep from waking Kreacher with his screams. “I’m an active sleeper,” he added, and Draco made a sound of understanding. He didn’t prod, and Harry was grateful. Draco understood the euphemism; Harry knew he wasn’t the only one their age with nightmares. 

“Then I had to Portkey to Wales first thing, and half the press corps was there to greet me, and these new eyeglass frames are too tight, so I’ve had the same fucking headache since Thursday. Not to mention that half of the Weasleys seem—is there a word for it? Let down by my being gay?” 

Draco snorted. “Perhaps the Germans have a word for it. Oh, or perhaps a _portmanteau._ ”

Harry shook his head and tried to keep from smiling too widely, noticing that Draco seemed to have difficulty looking him in the face. His cheeks were pinked, whether from a subtle blush enhancement charm or a flush was anyone’s guess. It made Harry feel lighter to see it, and he sat a little straighter in his chair, rolling his shoulders back so he looked as proper as he could muster. 

“It’s as though they bought stocks in my being super straight, you know? And forgot to tell me how important it was to them? So that's, you know, not a great feeling.” Harry sighed, the remembered sting of Molly Weasley’s words still fresh, the memory replaying in his mind easily. “I feel a bit crap, actually."

"Hmm," was all Draco said. His knee knocked once against Harry's under the table, then hit again and stayed there. A warm touch, explicit in what it promised while his face was clear, unreadable as stone. Harry drank in the sharp edges of his profile while he glanced around the room. His hair was loose today, pin-straight and wispy, parted on one side with his long fringe pulled behind his ears. He had perfect ears, Harry thought, not sticky-outy like his own. The silver stud earring was back, and Harry wanted to lick the shell of that ear, discover how much tickling Draco could take before he’d be pushed away. Harry considered too what it would be like to finally run his hands through his hair, to discover what the undercut felt like, if it would be rough like rubbing dragonhide leather the wrong way, or if it would be impossibly downy, like an owlets feathers. He wanted to run his fingers along Draco’s scalp and hold the back of his head as he kissed him, deliberately, slowly. 

"You’re being obvious,” Draco said, not looking at him, and Harry’s eyes dropped to his lap. 

_Control yourself_ , he thought. 

“Have you had anything to eat?" Draco asked. Harry pretended deep interest in the dregs of his glass, rotating it, so the foam formed a thin white line around its circumference. 

"Not really, no.” He gestured at the uneaten food. "The biographer in Wales is a vegan, and I wasn’t much interested in learning what milk made from oats is like.” Draco smiled again, more expansive this time. 

“It’s plain, Potter. You’re telling me muesli was too adventurous for you?”

Harry smiled too, the tightness in his lungs loosening. “I, I—I was a bit anxious about, well—this, I suppose. Seeing you."

"Are you always so forthcoming?" Draco asked.

Harry considered this. The press of eyes around the room looking and finding him was becoming noticeable. The warmth of the room and the volume of the assembled crowd seemed to have suddenly crept up, and his hands began to shake. 

_This was a bad idea. They can tell—he can tell. You’re so bloody obvious that you’re hopeless and stuttering._

"Not usually,” he said, hiding his hands under the table and making fists in his lap. “Not around everyone. It's the truth, is all. You asked."

"That's a yes, then. I thought so," Draco said. His eyes darted to Harry's lap, his only acknowledgement that he'd noticed the tremors before Harry could hide them. Then, lower. “Take a breath, Potter. This isn’t an interrogation. If you seem nervous, people will think I’m giving you a reason to be.”

"Aren’t you?” Harry asked. Draco finally looked him in the face, a perfect poker face, his eyes bright and clear. He didn’t enter Harry’s mind but sent instead wisp of something gentle that muffled his increasingly hysterical thoughts. It was like sitting in a dark, stuffy room during a stressful examination and turning to discover a window open to a pastoral scene, all green rolling hills and fluffy clouds floating past. He was still in a stressful place, but he didn’t care so much. Harry could practically smell sweet spring air, could feel it fill his lungs, worry expunged just as soon as it had entered. 

“Thank you," Harry whispered, and Draco gave him the faintest nod.

"Does it bother you?" Harry asked, holding Draco’s gaze. He released his fists and held on to the bench seating beneath him instead. The room felt quieter again. Bearable. “Would you rather I not tell you things?”

Draco shook his head as his gaze flitted around. He was careful about how often it came back to Harry's, he realized. 

_He’s much better than you at this,_ he realized. _He’s not fazed to see you. See how he doesn’t need to look at you every second? Emulate that. Learn from that._

"No. Yes. I don't know. It's different from what I'm used to.” Draco picked imaginary lint from his cuffs. Harry knew it was imaginary because he was so fastidious that there was never any lint to be found at all on his clothing. “I can't get a straight answer out of most of my friends without an Unforgiveable involved." Harry bit back even the briefest smile. He could contain himself, appear friendly, but not overly so. Not interested. 

Draco cleared his throat. 

“I'm the same as you. I can’t eat when I'm worried. Haven't had so much as toast since yesterday."

"Oh," Harry said. Draco watched him finish his beer and then pushed back in his seat, breaking the contact under the table. Harry was bereft without it. He wanted more, not less.

"How's this for a plan, Potter, since you're obviously not up to the task of making one," Draco started. "We break apart. Due diligence requires some amount of mingling from me, as this is a work event after all. And you can keep busy—I’m fairly certain I saw some tots by the banquet whose toy broomsticks looked remarkably unsigned by you."

"If it goes about as well as it did with Susan, it'll be a lot of grovelling, more like," Harry said. His mouth was doing the stupid thing again, speaking out of turn, only now he was cruel. Draco gave him a cutting look.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “That was rude.”

“Don’t be. You’re right.” He took a deep breath, steeling himself. Harry realized that Draco had a lot more on his plate being there than Harry did. He didn’t have the cushioning of friends or even friendly colleagues to soften the awkwardness that the event would bring him. “I’m astonished that you’re not talking with more of your old Auror mates. One would almost get the impression that you’d rather hide in the corner with a known Death Eater than catch up with the keepers of the peace.”

“Former Death Eater," he said automatically. Draco raised a brow at him, and Harry wouldn't look at him, a flush rising up his neck. "They’re not really my mates, anyway,” Harry said. He looked around, recognizing a few friendly faces. People he’d worked with for years, and not a single one he’d consider above the level of an acquaintance. “I barely got to know anybody in training. Ron's the one who bridged the gap with them and me.”

"Where is Weasley, by the by?" Draco asked.

Harry picked at a thumbnail, hoping that Draco's attention continued to be focussed elsewhere. "He owled, saying he was running late. Probably won't even make the match. So me talking to them," Harry gestured at the crowd, "will be awkward at best. I barely know them, to be frank." 

"And why would that be?”

Harry shrugged. _Don’t look, don’t look._

But of course, he looked, and his stomach wrung itself into knots because he got lost so quickly in Draco’s eyes, didn’t he? They were altogether familiar and yet now so new to Harry. Open and alive and bursting with emotions and thoughts Draco was generally so skilled at hiding from showing on his face. 

“I was busy?” 

Draco clucked. “For four years?”

“I, um, didn’t really fraternize properly?”

“I don’t think enough was done to socialize you Gryffindors when you were young. I’ve always thought this,” Draco said, straight-faced. Harry scoffed. 

“Oh shut up, you, no one asked you.” He looked over at an Auror—Patel, nice woman, tall and sturdy as oak—and realized that it _was_ strange, his lack of new friendships conspicuous. She gave him a little wave, and he waved back and realized they’d never spoken outside of the classroom. 

“I was always Harry Potter to them, I think. There's this weird level of deference I get. It's unnerving—like I could feel everyone staring, all the time, but no one would look me in the eye in the halls." Harry pushed his glasses up as he rubbed at tired eyes. "They were all too intimidated to join me for lunch in the canteen if Ron wasn’t there.”

He sighed and let his smudged glasses fall back into place on his nose. 

"Would you be left to eat alone, like the smelly kid?"

"Yeah, sort of." Harry snickered. “Not to mention Robards played favourites, and they all thought I was riding his dick for it—not literally,” he said, noticing the subtle curl of Draco’s lips. “He’d pull me from class directly into a photo-op and, like, wave some of my exams. I tried to get him to stop, but,” he shook his head at the ridiculousness of it. He’d been a kid, barely out of his teens—he’d needed normalcy, not fame. “Duelling was the worst of it. No one threw a proper hex my way, ever.”

“What a waste of their time,” Draco said, “I should have let them know it’s absolutely _brilliant_ throwing hexes at you.”

Harry laughed, a full hearty one, and Draco’s cheeks glowed. He looked so effortlessly beautiful, and Harry wished they were somewhere else so that, in this perfect moment, he could lean in and touch him.

“They wouldn’t tell you when you had ink on your face,” Draco said suddenly, and Harry only nodded, holding his gaze. The look was turning heated, and Harry could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end the longer they held it. 

Draco cleared his throat, looked away first. "Alright, a pivot then,” he said. “Join me."

"This is your idea of a plan? We simply hang out together in public?" 

Draco pretended to be miffed at the condescension, but Harry knew that he liked it for whatever earthly reason. 

"Gee, Draco, sure wish I had the brains to think that up."

Draco’s chin quivered with the effort of hiding a smile. 

"Come on, Potter, I could use your help breaking the ice with people. Help me with the ones who were in our year, at least? What's the point of you being on-side if I can't bask in your glow once in a while? Introduce me around to some of your cronies."

Harry laughed, really laughed, and as he did, he caught the moment when Draco's gaze broke ranks and fell for a moment to his mouth. He could basically read Draco’s mind at that moment, see that he remembered what Harry’s full lips could do. The pints kicked around in Harry's bloodstream, and a certain degree of recklessness settled over him. This could be fun. He could find fun in this.

"Cronies? Come on; we were schoolmates, that's all. I happened not to _bully_ the majority of them."

"Whatever,” Draco brushed this aside with a wave of his hand, “join me."

"Alright," Harry said. His heart has started pumping ever faster, the moment electric with possibility. "Then what?"

"Then we watch the match. Not sat together,” Draco said, and then in a smaller voice, “at least not yet.”

He flicked his wrist so that his wand fell into place in his hand and cast a discrete _Muffliato_ before adding, “If it goes longer than an hour, I'll leave for my place first. You follow after, give it at least 10 minutes. Say you’ve got a Firecall from your publisher you’ve forgotten, but only if someone asks. Don't offer an excuse."

"You do know I was in training to be an Auror, right?” Draco shot him a dark look. “And that I passed?" 

Draco frowned, and Harry raised his hands in defeat. 

"Alright, alright," Harry said. 

He'd been stuck imagining the deep dip of Draco's upper lip and the fullness of the bottom one all week, and now watching that mouth, so close they could touch _;_ he was going to be lucky to make it around the room without getting hard.

"Then what?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Then you'll pop over with my sunglasses. What else?"

"Then—"

A touch landed on Harry's thigh, but this time it wasn't the brush of a knee. It was Draco's hand delivering a painful squeeze.

"And then, perhaps, we'll eat, Potter. After all, I’m famished.” 

His voice was cordial, but his eyes were ice. 

Harry could taste something, violets again, only soapier, this time—the taste of Draco's magic tinged by his mood as it twisted around him. His thoughts were overtaken by Draco's will pushing into his mind, his voice clear inside Harry's head as though he were still speaking aloud.

_Keep your fucking cock in your trousers while we're in public, Potter, and I'll make it worth your while when I take it out later. Deal?_

"Deal," breathed Harry. The crowd's sounds replaced the quiet that had accompanied Draco's Legilimency as he left Harry's mind and ceased the muffling spell. 

"After you," Draco said, standing. "Let's start with the Ravenclaws, shall we? I can't stand Hufflepuffs, and I'll need a cigarette before I can entertain two Gryffindorks in conversation at the same time."

Harry rolled his eyes. This was going to be an unusual few hours.

* * *

Entered through the guest bedroom, Harry was surprised that Draco wasn't immediately visible. He'd gone home from the pitch to dispel some nerves—time enough for a quick slash, shower and change, grabbing a bottle of wine and Draco's sunglasses—but hadn't spared a thought to plan. Even after his poor showing earlier, he still couldn't think past _see Draco_.

That and he'd been half-certain that Draco would simply be waiting for him on the bed, scantily clad. This was better, though—he was fairly sure he'd have swallowed his tongue if Draco greeted him half-dressed.

"Draco?" Harry called.

"In here," Draco's voice came from the lounge, so Harry walked that way. He wished that his traitor heart would stop beating so frantically as he entered, and Draco turned to him. 

"You showered?" Draco asked. He hadn't changed, his hair still tousled as it had been by the winds coming off the pitch earlier. Harry had watched it blowing around, clearly driving Draco mad, sitting next to Ron from two rows up. Ron's arrival had been late enough that he and Draco had separated already, which Harry was blessedly grateful for. It was one thing to be seen chatting together by the public; it was another entirely to do so in front of their inner circles. Harry was sure than Ron would have him checked into the Janus Thickey ward before he could count to three had he caught them cordially talking about the Harpies chances of taking the cup with the administrative staff of the Department of Mysteries, so it was for the best that for now, he remained unaware of their new, friendly status with one another. 

Harry shrugged with the bottle of wine aloft in one hand and the sunglasses in the other.

"I've been up since half-four; it feels like I've already lived a whole day. And while I was home, I brought these—" Harry said, holding out the sunglasses for Draco to take.

"You knew that they were an excuse, right?" He raised an eyebrow, watching Harry’s reaction.

"Well, yeah," Harry lied. 

Draco enjoyed needling him, even if it wasn't necessary. Especially if it wasn't, which was something he'd always done. 

_Though_ , Harry thought, as a tidal wave of shock set itself up to crash on him, _that might also be how he flirts._

Which meant that he _liked_ -liked Harry if only a little.

This also meant that perhaps he’d liked-liked Harry for a very, very long time. And that was a thought for another day entirely. 

"Even so, I can't pull them off," Harry said, finding words again. "And you look great in them."

"I—oh." That shut him right up. Draco swallowed, eyes wide as he held the glasses dumbly in his hands. 

Harry held the bottle of wine aloft, pride replacing worry. He'd won that exchange. 

_Who could have known that all it takes is a well-placed compliment, and he’s knocked entirely off-kilter?_

He’d have to remember that in future. 

"I brought this, too. It topped a best-of list last year, says Seamus."

Draco took the bottle to examine the label, cradling it. 

"That's, um. Lovely, Potter,” he said quietly. 

"He's on his way to being a sommelier, so I think he knows his stuff. Australian, um, somewhat fruity. Or was it floral? I'd tell you the notes, but I'm rubbish at them myself—I just like it cold," Harry was ranting. He bit the inside of his bottom lip to keep from rambling on.

"It would see more use at yours, though," Draco said. He sounded vaguely unhappy, staring as though the bottle were something odd, like if Harry’d handed him a rock instead. 

"How's that? Can I get us glasses?" Harry gestured a thumb over his shoulder, hopeful that a quick escape to the kitchen would give him the space he needed to regain his breath.

"Glass, if you like. I'm at my limit," Draco said. Harry scoffed.

"Come off it. You had ice-water during the match. I was going to ask if you were on antibiotics or something. Do you not like whites? I'll bring a red next time, I—"

"No, Potter," Draco said, and Harry tensed up. He put the items down on the cupboard beside him with a sigh. "I really am at my limit."

"Your limit is zero?"

"Exactly." Draco leaned back and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. This line of questioning seemed to be making him uncomfortable. 

Harry frowned—he’d been trained to notice things, and this seemed like an egregious lie to suddenly make up. 

"But I've seen you drink,” he said, slowly. “I'm sure of it."

"You think you've seen me drink,” Draco said. “I try not to make a big deal of it. People go strange around teetotalers.”

 _Oh, fuck_. Harry could kick himself. 

"Shite. I—I'm sorry I brought it round. If it's a problem—"

"No, but it's kind that you—fuck, why are we even talking about this?” 

Draco launched off the cupboard and in three quick steps, he was on Harry, a kiss to the side of his mouth, not proper, and then it was wandering lower to his jaw, to his neck, and Harry couldn't have put together two words if he wanted to.

Because Draco's hands were on him too, and his scent was in his nostrils, sweet and clean, and he made the most decadent sound when Harry's hands held him closer. Draco pushed him roughly back so that Harry fell to the couch, and then he was on him again, straddling his lap. His mouth was a hot, wet thing against the stubble of Harry's jaw, that wonderful place where ear met neck. His bare hands cupped Harry's face and roamed his hair freely, tugging. 

"Fuck, Potter, why do you do this to me?" Draco murmured. Harry made a sound, low in his chest. How was he meant to answer that? Draco rolled his hips, making his erection known, trapped between them.

"You have to go around looking like you do, don't you? Take these stupid things off," Draco removed Harry's glasses from his face and floated them away with a careless gesture. Up close, Harry could see how quickly he'd been debauched—lips full, colour high on his cheeks and throat, wisps of bone-white hair falling into his face.

As his fingers pulled at the hem of Harry's t-shirt, he growled close to his ear, "I want to fuck you so badly, you have no idea.”

And Harry froze. The insistence of Draco's fingers exploring inside the waist of his jeans was suddenly too much. Harry didn't have a plan, didn't know what he wanted or didn't want, only that he wanted more of Draco, in concept. He hadn't stopped to think about reality; about the fact that Draco would assume that _that_ was on the menu. Fucking. Sex—the kinds of sex that were afforded to one by virtue of them taking place in a house, a couch, a bed, and not during stolen minutes in a pub toilet. Obviously, fucking was the natural end to these sorts of things, and Harry had no clear idea of how they were supposed to make their way down that path together.

Draco pulled the shirt over Harry's head, but as he moved in to nuzzle at his throat again, he slowed. Harry's kept his hands on Draco's back, but where seconds ago he'd held on tight, he let them go slack. 

"Potter,” Draco took a deep breath and pushed his loose hair out of his face, "what is it?"

Harry scrunched his nose, thinking. 

_Fuck. He's going to kick you out, idiot, idiot, idiot. Just leave, leave before—_

"Have I read the room so wrong?" Draco asked, a slow, devious smile spreading across his face.

"No," Harry managed, clearing his throat. He didn't want to be trapped in his body anymore, wishing that he could watch the scene from above. His voice barely felt like his own when he spoke. 

"It's not that," he continued. He used to be able to leave his body completely when he needed to, but he'd lost that trick to time. He couldn't float over the scene anymore, but it still felt a bit like throwing his voice for a marionette; only he was both the doll and its master. 

"Well, I—" Draco's fingers continued to play with Harry's skin, stroking the muscles of his shoulder. He spoke slowly, as though he were deciding while speaking aloud. "I don't normally bottom for anyone shorter than me, but," he hesitated, and Harry realized that he was about to be made the exception. "If you don't want to, I've been known to make allowances..." 

Draco let the sentence dangle, biting his lower lip, an invitation yet to be signed. Harry couldn't meet his gaze, removing his hands to rub the sofa's fabric in nervous little circles. 

_You’re here_ , he thought. _You’re right here, under Draco. You’re Harry James Potter, and you’re right here, and you can do this._

"Wait. Potter," Draco said, pulling further back as comprehension slowly dawned. "Have you never..."

Those eyes that saw everything were scanning his face, and Harry couldn’t meet them. He watched the potted plant in the corner glow a brighter purple, then darken again, wishing that he could throw his cloak on and simply disappear from the situation altogether. 

"Potter," Draco said calmly. He smoothed a hand through his mess of hair and down to the nape of his neck. Harry wouldn't look at him. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to see what expression he wore now. 

This didn’t discourage Draco from repeating the motion.

"Potter," he said. He just kept doing it, long fingers untangling his hair as they scraped wonderfully down his scalp.

"What, Draco," Harry directing his question into his lap. Well, Draco's lap, with his prick still clearly visible, straining behind his fly. Harry felt almost overwhelmingly sad, even more-so than embarrassed. The put down was coming; he could feel it.

"I'm hungry."

Harry looked up at the words, incongruous with the situation they found themselves in. "What?" 

Draco huffed. "I'm craving prosciutto." He pulled away from Harry's grasp, wincing as he rearranged his erection into a more comfortable position within his jeans before settling into the sofa, cross-legged. "And cheese. Something crispy and astonishingly fattening."

"Are you asking me to eat with you?" Harry questioned as he summoned his glasses and t-shirt. Draco watched him dress, eyes unabashedly glued to his chest and stomach.

"I'm stating what I want," Draco said, with a bit of a pouting. He leaned back into the cushions, giving Harry the space in which to think clearly again. "You can join me if you'd like," he said.

Harry stood, wiping his sweating palms down the thighs of his trousers. 

"Croquettes," he said. Draco looked up to him, a smile playing on his full lips, and fuck how Harry just wanted to go back in time and be kissing them again. "What you want are croquettes."

"And how does one procure said croquettes?" Draco asked.

"Erm," Harry fumbled his glasses, wiped them on his shirt to clean them. "I know a place that does them for takeaway. If you, I mean." He replaced them on his face and scratched the back of this neck, trying for as nonchalant as possible. "If you'd like me to get you some? And to come back?"

Draco nodded. "Us. Get some for us." His smile would put the Cheshire cat to shame. "Look at that Potter; you're not so useless after all. So what do you say?"

Harry got up and pat his back-pocket to ensure his wallet was in place.

"I say I'll be back in thirty with croquettes, I suppose."

"Right-o," Draco said. "See you soon."

* * *

Within the hour, Harry was back in Draco's flat. They shared a spot on the floor around his coffee-table with napkins darkened by greasy fingertips balanced on their knees, the rich smells of gorgonzola and cured ham overpowering the room. It wasn't such an odd thing, technically—Harry did it with friends often enough. Eating takeaway, talking shit, sipping wine. What was off was that he was doing it with Draco.

They commented on the Quidditch match—boring, uninspired playing all around. The unusually warm late summer weather, which Harry enjoyed and Draco abhorred, preferring the ability to layer to watching out for sunny days that threatened his complexion. The food, and how surprised Draco was that Harry knew of anything more complicated than gruel. It was almost—normal, like a date. As normal as it could be for Harry to witness Draco licking his fingers or using a plastic fork. That was to say that nothing about the situation was normal at all.

"I think," Draco said with a final daub of his napkin at the corners of his lips, "that we ought to talk about some things. Set some ground rules." He folded his napkin into a neat square, whereas Harry had created a crumpled pile of haphazard mess. Harry swatted at the pile of garbage with his wand, banishing the lot.

"Sure. Yeah. Of course." Harry feigned composure as he dusted off the seat of his trousers to join Draco on the couch. Harry held his bent legs close to him while Draco sprawled, one foot nearly touching Harry's leg. He was doing it on purpose, of course. Keeping Harry on edge by being in his space. 

"Alright. Have you ever done this before?"

"Friends with benefits, you mean?" 

Draco lowered his lids and looked blandly at him like he was so incredibly dull. “We'd have to be friends first for that to work, Potter." 

That Harry didn't so much as blink out of turn was a miracle. Though the words were correct, they still stung. 

"I think we'd fit neatly into the fuck buddy category, personally," Draco continued.

Harry shook his head. "No, I haven't. Had a fuck buddy before."

"Well, I have, so let me help you," Draco said, softening his tone. 

"Some ground rules. We need something discrete to communicate. Set up times and places.”

“Regularly?” Harry hated how hopeful he sounded, like a child who’d been told they could have ice-cream every day. A fair brow rose on Draco’s face. 

“If possible. I’d rather not leave the two of us finding ourselves in these situations to chance, do you?”

Harry shook his head, and Draco nodded. “Good. I'd suggest the Floo and charmed notes, but if you've got visitors pretty often, they might get suspicious if one comes through while they're there." 

Harry finished his glass of wine, and before he’d noticed, Draco plucked the bottle off the table and leaned over, refilling his glass. Harry couldn’t help but drink in the lines of his face, his throat, the little silver stud earring in his ear as he concentrated on his task. He reset the bottle and caught Harry’s eye for a moment and smiled, cheeky thing, and Harry’s heart started doing double time in his chest. 

He really was hopeless in the face of Draco’s beauty.

"This is more like hiding an affair than fuck buddies, now that I think about it," Draco mused to himself. He tilted his head to regard Harry, resting his temple on a fingertip.

"You've had a lot of experience getting away with affairs?" Harry sounded judgemental even though he didn't feel it. The feeling he really felt made less sense: Jealousy, a hot and bubbling acidic brew just under his skin.

Draco's expression remained impassive. "I haven't always had the pick of the litter, what with being a former Death Eater and all.” There it was—a reminder of the past delivered icily. A little something to temper how Harry looked at him, Harry supposed. 

“I’m not one to judge what drives a person to seek out some warmth on a cold night.”

“Muggles don’t know what your Mark means,” Harry countered. His words felt callous before he even said them. “You know—the ones you don’t mind picking up at the bar nowadays.”

“Oh? I’ve given them plenty of reasons to avoid me too.”

“Care to share? Warn me off early?”

Draco gave him a sharp stare, eyes cold and calculating. 

“I’ve had my fun, Potter. More than most, less than some. And so far as alternative arrangements are concerned, I’ve never much minded being the other man. Nobody’s ever been under the delusion that we were to run off together into the sunset.” 

Draco looked away then, and Harry wondered if this bravado was covering for something. Perhaps once upon a time, Draco had hoped for the sunset and the fairytale ending. There were flashes when the cold mask slipped, and underneath, Harry could clearly imagine Draco's soft centre—someone warm, sweet, even. It was a fantasy; obviously, he was projecting, but still. 

“All I'm saying is, I’m not most people's idea of a good time,” Draco finished sounding like he could care less about this designation. Harry wasn’t convinced. 

"Good thing I'm not most people," Harry said, finally. 

Draco's lips quirked. "Yes, an excellent thing. I have, however," he said, "learned to be discrete. Do we have a problem?”

Harry shook his head. "Nope. I think I’ve got just the thing for us to use. Coins, under a Protean charm."

Draco perked up. "Would this be some clandestine, Ministry of Magic, Auror-business stuff you've gone and nicked?"

"Not quite.” Harry looked around the room, taking in the titles on the bookshelf across from him. Many were in Latin, though some were Muggle in provenance, thick textbooks with cheap, waxy covers. “We used fake Galleons to set up meetings of Dumbledore's Army back in sixth year. I still have some kicking around at home."

"You forget, I did something of the same." 

"I haven't forgotten," Harry said, not looking at him. "Madam Rosmerta. Sixth year."

He kept looking at the textbooks, not wanting to look at Draco, not wanting to remember that year too clearly. Where he thought he’d find a pit of dull rage at Draco’s teenage behaviour was instead a blankness, a hole in his feelings. He really wasn’t angry with Draco anymore. Not this one. 

"You stole that idea from Hermione, you know."

Draco huffed; the insinuation that he wasn’t intelligent enough to have done it himself clearly irked him. "Sure, but I always speculated that she stole the idea from snakeface himself. And careful who you talk to in that tone—only Granger and I managed a Protean Charm before seventh year." 

"And only you, _Imperius_ ," Harry said. Draco didn't say anything to that, staring into his lap. Harry sighed, rubbed at his eyes under his glasses, smudging them again. "Look—I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I don't want to talk about the past any more than you do."

"Fantastic," Draco snapped. 

“You’re getting petulant,” Harry noted, watching as the comment worked him up further. 

Draco huffed. “You can’t possibly understand how annoying you are,” he said. 

“Because I’m so dull, of course,” Harry said, careful to keep his tone even. 

Draco gave him a long-suffering look before he gave in. “Those will work,” he said. “Whoever sends the first message has to make the journey over. Keeps it fair."

"What, _have hard-on, can travel_?"

Draco rolled his eyes like it was his life's calling. 

"If it's an emergency, send a note by Floo, never owl post."

Harry snapped his fingers. "That reminds me. You'll need a note to be able to Floo over to Grimmauld from here, or to Apparate onto the grounds." 

He pulled the manuscript free from his pocket, quickly thumbing through it to find a blank bit of page to scribble the address on. Draco craned his neck, staring down his nose at the words.

"Do you have a spare quill I can borrow? Or a biro, since you fancy those," Harry asked, teasing.

"Sure. Need something to write on too, or were you really going to rip a page from your precious book out for me?" Draco summoned a pen and passed it to Harry.

"I'll do you one better," Harry muttered, pretending to be more exasperated than he felt. Draco did bring out the drama in him. He scrawled _12 Grimmauld Place, London_ in the margin in his spikiest, least legible lettering, sure to annoy him. 

"Here, have it," he said, passing the whole thing over. "Once you've read the address, you'll be able to visit from anywhere. Though there's generally paparazzi out front, so I wouldn't recommend it. I'm sure there's a mole in the Department of Transportation, so who knows for how long the front yard will be unplottable—"

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Draco asked, keeping the book cracked open with his thumb.

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. Read it, burn it, whatever you want. There you have it; _my book_."

"Don't you need a copy?"

"I'll say I misplaced it and get another. Don't worry about it." Harry began to itch under Draco's questioning. He watched as he flipped a page, skimming its contents. "What?"

"You shouldn't be so trusting of everyone," Draco said finally, putting the book down gently on the table. He smoothed its cover flat and rested his palm on it like it was an animal in need of soothing. 

"I'm not so trusting," Harry said. His discomfort intensified as he mulled over what he'd just done. Was it weird? Had he again revealed himself as a freak, an aberration who couldn’t even make a joke, properly? "And you’re not everyone.”

“I am me, though,” Draco countered. 

Harry fumbled for a way to turn his jumbled thoughts into coherent words. “Sure, but I trust you. To an extent.” Draco stared at the manuscript. Harry plowed on. 

“You're the only one with a complete copy anywhere in the world right now. It would be pretty obvious should it leak. And you're not going to share it."

“How are you so sure?” Draco asked. He stared at the book, frowning, and Harry started to worry that this would lead to some kind of fight. 

“I don't know, I—I can just tell. Call me crazy, but I’m a pretty good judge of character,” Harry said. 

"You're right,” Draco said, at last, utterly solemn. “If it leaks, it won’t be from me." 

Draco fixed him with icy eyes, and Harry felt like he was being seen through. He coughed and looked away, wishing for a distraction. 

"You use a mailing service, so this way will cut down on the chances of a third-party noticing something amiss. Using notes, and the Floo, when we have to," Draco elaborated.

The skin on the back of Harry’s neck prickled at this casual statement of fact. "How do you know I use a mailing service?" Harry asked.

"I feel like about once a day you forget you're Harry Potter,” Draco spoke to himself, and then at a greater volume that included Harry, "for fuck's sakes, you _are_ famous, yes? I assume you get a mountain of mail weekly, and you must have someone sort it for you. You're useless at organizing." He poked a toe into Harry's side. "I'm fairly sure I'm yet to see you in a pair of matching socks."

"Oh, yeah, I guess that—"

"And Mr. Sparks let it slip," Draco added slyly. Harry knocked at his shin, but the smile on Draco's face didn't budge. Harry settled lower into the couch, lingering in Draco's space.

"Okay, what else?"

"Stop being so bloody obvious in public. Absolutely no public displays of affection."

"But what if you've got the arse of a minor god, and I can’t be helped to want to grab it?" 

Harry loved that though Draco scowled, he so obviously loved the compliment, his magic licking at the edges of Harry's, the feeling like static electricity zooming along his skin.

"Only minor?" he asked. 

"You'd be a mite unattainable living atop Mount Olympus with the major ones," he said. 

"No Floo access, I suppose," Draco mused. 

“A bit tiresome having to fly all that way for a bit of arse, even if it _is_ magnificent,” Harry added. 

“Oh, it’s magnificent now, is it?”

They both bit back laughs at the increasingly absurd line of conversation. Harry felt distinctly like they were flirting, which typically went much more disastrously than it currently was. 

_See, this is fun. This is how you do it. He can tolerate you when you’re normal. Keep him smiling, and maybe he won’t push you away just yet._

"I can't hold your hand?" Harry said with a pout, asking with as much mock sincerity as he could muster. Draco froze before the mask dropped back into place.

"Don't kid," he said, low. Harry could swear that there was a hint of hurt there, but he was scared to consider why. Perhaps holding hands was Draco’s idea of declaring love; maybe he didn’t like to be reminded of the one that he hid so thoroughly from the world. "Just don’t go drooling over my arse every time you catch sight of it. If I notice you at it again, I'm hexing your eyebrows off. Permanently."

"Understood," Harry said, smirking from behind his glass of wine to hide the rise of anxiety within him. 

"Don't forget, too, that this is meant to be convenient. I'm busy; you're busy. We can't have expectations for each other. No dropping in without asking first."

Harry nodded. "No kissing,” he said, though he'd meant it to be a question, it came out forcefully, like a statement.

"If that muddies things for you," Draco said, suddenly very interested in the hem of his shirt, "then no. We don’t have to kiss if you don’t want to."

"I—it doesn't," Harry said tersely. “I like it. Kissing.” _You_ was left unspoken because it said too much. He finished his wine with one last gulp and abandoned the glass to the table. "What else?"

"I think that about sorts it for rules," Draco said, smoothing the fabric of his shirt down over his stomach. 

_He's hedging_ , Harry thought. _Behind all his big talk, he's apprehensive too, the wanker._

Recognizing that Draco was nervous was the spark Harry needed to kindle his courage. He picked up Draco's foot and brought it into his lap, pressing his thumbs firmly into the arch. 

Draco wriggled lower, his face tensing with anticipated pain and relaxing into the massage. 

"That's nice, keep doing that," he said softly. His feet belonged to someone who worked with them—callused, his long toes bunched up into a slight curl. They felt nice, though, the soles oddly smooth in Harry’s hands. 

"So have you ever?" Draco said, eyes closed as Harry worked. He was good with his hands; he’d been told so numerous times before. He was less nervous when he was doing something—talking on its own felt too intimate.

"Have I ever what?"

"Spare me." Draco popped open one eye, the better to stare Harry down and make him feel like an ant beneath his gaze. "Are you a virgin or what, Potter?"

Harry relaxed his grip as he steeled himself. "Could a virgin blow you like I did last week?" 

This comment gave Harry the intense pleasure of watching Draco really, truly blush. Red sprung across his cheeks, spreading to his entire face and throat as he pulled away from Harry's grip. Harry held on tightly until he stopped resisting.

"I don't think I'm a virgin, Draco, whatever the word means you,” Harry said. "I'm not going to be made to feel foolish about my sexual history," he added defiantly. 

"I apologize," Draco said. "I didn’t mean to poke fun. Go on."

"I’ve slept with women, and I've fooled around with blokes. I've never gone all the way with a guy, though. Yet." Harry pushed firmly to the ball of Draco's foot and got his eyelids to flicker shut again. He gave a little moan, wincing, and the combination sent a burst of interest directly to Harry’s cock, stiffening against his thigh. He started to massage Draco’s left foot and Draco, forever devious, inched the newly freed right foot down Harry's clothed thigh until his toes came to rest on it. Harry stilled, waiting for the toes to scrunch or for a comment, but Draco just left it there, an unfulfilled touch. 

"You've never fucked a man," Draco said, "or been fucked? Penetrated, I mean."

"Yeah. Um, neither." Harry said. Heat rose like the tide coming in, up past his collar. He’d never spoken so frankly about sex with anyone, ever. "But I'd like to. Do. Both."

"Alright," Draco said.

That was it. _Alright_. Harry exhaled his relief as Draco continued talking.

"I've fucked a lot of men, not that it matters."

"I gathered as such, considering you have rules involving height. By the way, you're barely an inch taller than me," Harry said.

"At least three, more in shoes," Draco said. “Don’t go getting Napoleonic about it.” He fluttered the toes of the foot getting massaged, and Harry moved up to work at them too. 

" _Ngh_ , that's good." Draco groaned again, head falling to his shoulder, and Harry smiled inwardly, pleased with himself. 

_"_ Anyway, Potter, I've done a lot, and sex doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to. If you're not careful, you can pile a whole slew of meaning on something that can be transactional, if that's what you're after."

"Transactional," Harry repeated. 

The cruel Draco of his dreams came to him, unbidden. 

_I sucked you last time,_ Dream Draco said, _so now it’s your turn._ As though they were tallying up the orgasms they’d had and given one another on some cosmic scoreboard—tit for tat. 

"Yes. Having needs met. Nothing more than what happens in loos all the world round, you know?"

Again, Harry felt as though Draco's words were a wet blanket thrown over his arousal. 

"Yeah, of course," Harry lied. He was getting better at this—lying to Draco. He didn't like it at all. 

“Does it have to be meaningless for it to work?” he found himself asking, even as the alarm bells in his mind went off that he should leave it. “In your experience?”

"No,” Draco answered slowly, weighing his words. “It doesn’t have to be. It is, though. For us. Clearly.”

“Clearly,” Harry echoed. They were silent for a time, and Harry wished desperately for a second glass of wine, maybe a third. Anything to cover for the hollow feeling that what was on offer from Draco Malfoy was _transactional sex_ , implying that there was nothing beyond the flirting and things said between gasping breaths than a mutual desire to get off.

“You should remember that everything is up for negotiation, except for when it isn't." 

Harry looked up from his task. Draco took a sip of water and straightened, pulling his foot free and removing the other's pressure from Harry's cock. Which, Harry couldn't help but notice, was hard as a rock now and hypersensitive, stuck between the cotton of his y-fronts and the stickiness of his thigh. There’d been too much talking and not enough doing for its liking. 

"You never have to do something just because I ask or because I want to."

"I know _that_ —" Harry interjected, but Draco quickly shushed him.

"Do you, really? Need I bring up your attendance at the crups and kneazles benefit?"

"Well, that was—"

"Let's say I say something like, _I want to fuck you_ , for example," Draco enunciated the word _fuck_ crisply the way he now knew Harry liked it. It worked—his cock somehow stiffened further, filling out. Something must have passed over Harry's face because Draco's eyes lit up, recognizing the effect he had on him. Harry’d pay to have Draco talk dirty to him all day if he could.

"That's up for negotiation," Draco continued. "You can say _yes_ if you want to, or _no_ if you don't. But there's also _yes, but_ or _no, but_. You can—"

"Yes, but," Harry said. Draco looked at him incredulously.

"What?"

"You. Fucking me.”

Draco's eyebrows rose dangerously high, want and surprise clear as day on his face. 

"Yes. But, not today."

"Alright," Draco gulped. "Okay. Alright. Let's try another. I want to see you naked. Can I undress you?"

"Yes," Harry answered. Draco licked his lips and crawled over.

"I really want to touch you," he said, heated palms smoothing up Harry's t-shirt, pulling it slowly up his torso. "Can I touch you, Potter?" he asked.

"Yes," Harry said, his voice rumbling low into Draco's ear for as he straddled him again. Jumpers and t-shirts came off in an uncoordinated jumble until Draco’s fingers could roam Harry's bare chest, but he didn't crowd him, didn't card his hair or kiss his neck as he had before. Harry waited, tense beneath him.

"Can I kiss you here?" Draco asked, touching the spot where ear met jaw. Harry nodded, words sticking in his throat. 

"Say it, Potter. I want to hear you say it." 

"Yes," Harry breathed the word, and Draco dipped his head to kiss the spot. The softness of his lips was electric, sending tingles down Harry's spine. It reminded Harry of his first time with another man, toe to toe against a parked lorry. Just kissing, but like magic itself had set all the hair on his body on end. 

Draco did it again, and again, touching a spot and asking and then kissing it, settling his weight fully into Harry’s lap, until Harry was desperate for something more.

Draco pulled away, hands cradling Harry's face between them.

"Can I kiss your face?"

"Yes," Harry said. Draco first planted kisses that shut Harry's eyelids, freeing him of the need to observe. It felt unbearably intimate, this back and forth. Harry was so much more used to following feeling alone, nudging up against boundaries and sometimes being rebuked, but being made to speak his wants aloud charged the very air itself.

"You can kiss me whenever you want to," Harry whispered as Draco's lips roamed his skin; forehead, cheeks, until finally, he stopped, his fingers brushing Harry's lips.

"Can I kiss you here?" Draco breathed the question into the side of Harry's mouth. 

"Fuck yes, please," Harry said before their mouths crashed together, and it was bliss. He whimpered into it, _whined_ , and Draco laughed into his mouth, kissed him like he was thirsty for it, like it was all he'd ever wanted. They kissed desperately because they were both so hard because the kiss held all the want of the last week, of weeks, of so much time Harry couldn’t contemplate. The wet heat of Draco's mouth promised so much debauchery and _gods,_ could he kiss.

It was a distraction from everything, even as Draco's hands freed the button of his trousers. He broke contact and shifted back onto his heels to ask Harry, breathless, "Take them off?" and it was all Harry could do to nod and shimmy out of them, lifting his hips to tear everything down at once, struggling to pull off even his socks and fling them away until he laid naked, flat on his back. Draco was on top of him in an instant, hair brushing Harry's cheeks.

"Look at you," he murmured, dipping down to lick at a nipple. It pebbled, brown and hard against his baby pink tongue. "I don't know where all these muscles came from, Potter," he said, "but let me tell you, I'm a big fan." Harry exhaled, laughing even as Draco nipped at his side, the scrape of his teeth followed by the firm press of his lips.

Draco's jeans stretched tightly over his thighs, his body radiating heat even through the material to Harry’s hips, trapped between them. Harry threw his head back and closed his eyes, lost to all the things Draco's mouth could do to him and was surprised when three of Draco's fingers were at his bottom lip.

"Wet these for me?" Draco asked, and Harry sucked the fingers before he thought to question why. Draco smiled wickedly at him, cooing, "Good boy," as he pulled his fingers out and—

" _Fuck_ ," Harry gasped, head knocking back into the arm of the sofa. Draco used his fingers to coat the head of Harry's leaking cock with his own spit before curling to make an 'o' for him to slide through. They were connected now at their mouths, locked in a groaning kiss, and where Draco's hair tickled Harry's cheeks and kept getting in the way, and where his hand tugged slickly, and it was perfect, but it also wasn't enough. When Draco leaned back to catch his breath, he left Harry panting. 

"I want to know what you taste like," Draco said. His voice had grown rougher as he lost composure. "Can I?"

"Yes," Harry rasped, "yes, I'm yours."

"Be good and keep your arms up here now," Draco poked at one of Harry's biceps and bit his lip, that adorable sharp snaggletooth catching. He watched as Harry flexed his arms for him, bending them back and over the sofa. "Yes, just like that. I don't want you to get any ideas about pushing my head about." 

Harry held his breath as Draco shimmed down his body and lowered his head, looking him in the eye and his tongue ventured out to play with the head of his cock. He hummed with delight when this caused it to jump, revealing a pool of precome glistening on the ridges of his abs. 

Then, Draco gave him a carnal smile, tightened his grip around the base, and fully brought Harry's cock into his mouth. 

Harry gasped, back instantly arching into the feeling, but he couldn't dare look away. He was utterly transfixed as Draco pushed his foreskin down with his lips, little by little, and rolled it back up the same way, eyes closed and looking for all the world like this was the most reverent task he’d ever been set to do. Here was Draco Malfoy, suckling at his prick, his mouth infinitely hot and wet and flagrantin ways Harry had never dream of. He sucked down halfway and back up again, bobbing his head at the tempo he'd set with his hand. The nails of the hand he used to steady himself dug deeply into Harry's thigh, but Harry could hardly feel them at all.

"Draco, fuck, _gods_ , could you—" 

Harry pled, and Draco didn't stop or even slow down, somehow knowing just what he was being asked to do. The thumb of the hand around Harry's shaft moved down to massage his bollocks. He pulled them gently, rubbed each one in turn in his palm, and it was so much. Harry arched his back further and keened, desperate to force his hips higher, deeper into Draco’s incredible mouth. He pushed back through the crown of his head, shoulders and arse against the sofa, and Draco scooted back, never not sucking until he freed Harry's thigh and used those fingers instead to push at the soft space between his bollocks and his arsehole, and it was all over. Harry's stomach seized up as his body attempted to fold in half. 

"Here, here—" was his shouted warning, and then he was coming, groaning as come flooded Draco’s mouth. Harry's entire body was like one hot, exposed nerve, his pleasure all-encompassing and complete as Draco dutifully swallowed around him. 

When Draco finally sucked off of Harry's softening prick, he gave a sweeping lick around his lips. He hadn’t spilled a drop. 

"You taste nice," he said, voice raspy. 

Harry made a sound as he collapsed back into the cushions, aftershocks wracking his body like tiny electrocutions. Draco grinned up at him and kissed the middle of his chest, then lower. Harry watched, entranced as he licked a wet spot clean, his tongue a fabulous pink against the deep even tan of Harry's skin. He lapped like a cat at the dark trail of black hair that started at his navel, cleaning the little spill left behind by his precome above the nest of black curls surrounding Harry's cock. 

He languidly pulled Harry's still-hard cock up from his body and pressed the point of his tongue into the slit, and Harry couldn't look anymore. He hissed and redoubled his grip on the couch, eyes squeezed shut against the overstimulation.

"Draco," Harry managed to choke out, "please—"

"Can I come on you?" Draco interrupted Harry's pleas, letting his spent erection drop back to point uselessly at his hipbone. His hands scrabbled to lower his own flies, but his eyes were on Harry's face all the while, shiny and desperate. Harry nodded dazedly as Draco pushed his everything down just low enough that his erection, as perfect in real life as it was in Harry's memory, was free. Draco was over him on all fours, kissing him with that mouth, that filthy mouth that liked how Harry tasted, that cleaned him up. He licked into Harry to open him up, and then he couldn't even keep the kissing up, his eyes squeezed shut and his breath escaping him in gasps as he pulled at his cock faster, frenzied. Harry watched his face, utterly transfixed by how completely lost Draco was to his own lust, how free he looked, subsumed totally by his need to come.

"Come all over me," Harry blurted out, and Draco tried to contain his groan but couldn't quite keep it back in his throat. Harry wrapped his hands around Draco's hips, holding him steady above him. "Make a mess all over my cock.” 

Draco moaned again and spasmed, close, so close, his hand stripping his prick. Harry had never had much chance to learn how to talk dirty, but it came naturally with Draco. “Come all over, and you can lick it off since you like cleaning up so much."

"Oh, Potter, I'm going to, oh _fuck—"_ Draco keened, half collapsing onto Harry as he came just as he was asked to, thick stripes of white spunk decorating Harry's softening erection. He rocked forwards with each spurt, a whine escaping him. 

“Just like that,” Harry said, watching, “all of it.” Draco took forever to finish, until the last bit of come dripped out, coating only his fingers, an excess like he'd been saving up for this all week.

He couldn't help but think that maybe he _had_ waited all week.

Draco sighed into Harry's neck as he went boneless. Neither made an effort to move while they caught their breath, and Harry was happy to hold his weight and just be until Draco shivered harshly, sweat starting to cool. He sat up at last and tucked his cock back inside his pants, pulling his jeans up without zipping them. 

"I think I'm—" he said, dozy, leaving the sentence unfinished. 

"You can lick up your spunk next time," Harry said with a sly smile, that Draco returned with his eyes closed. He watched as Draco's panting body make the shape of the letter _c,_ his abs strained inwards in with every breath. Harry took a moment to learn his naked torso; how his nipples were little buttons of the same colour of his lips; the hair dusting his arms and across his chest and stomach a darker, golden blonde than the hair Harry knew so well on his head; how the crisscrossing ropes of his _Sectumsempra_ scars connected the deep hollows of his collarbones to the dips near each of hipbone, sharp as glass. How he wasn't skin and bones, not gaunt, but lithe, with hard muscle under all that creamy, soft skin. Draco was so incredibly white everywhere, except for where he wasn't—dusky cock, black Mark, waxy pink scars and eyes the colour of river stones. How he didn't try to hide his imperfections from Harry—once revealed, he didn't shrink from his scars at all.

"Has something caught your eye?" Draco asked. Harry watched, amused, as he pushed loose strands of hair back with his clean hand. Harry loosened his grip on his hips at last and let his hands fall to his thighs, thumbs rubbing the fabric aimlessly as the calm following sex blanketed him, made him bold. 

"You’ve got a swimmer's body,” he said as he admired the sharp line of his shoulders and how intensely his torso narrowed at his waist, down to straight hips. Harry made a note to get Draco out of his trousers next he saw him—his legs were some secret thing he hadn't yet seen properly.

Draco scoffed. “Dancer’s,” he said. 

“What?”

“Never mind." He puffed out a great rush of air, but his exasperation remained fond.

“You look pretty, is all," Harry said, stifling a yawn. 

Draco wrinkled his nose.

“Shut up, Potter," he said, flicking one of Harry's nipples.

"Is it so bad that I find you attractive?" Harry asked. He flicked Draco back and closed his eyes, concentrating on his new cleaning charm. He could tell that it had worked when his cock tingled where Draco's come was banished.

"You don't have to _say it,_ " Draco grumbled, settling back on to the far end of the couch. Cleaning Harry's wine glass with a tap of his wand to fill it with water, he took a gulp and then offered it to share. "How do you get that charm to work?"

Harry took the water and sipped, propped up on one forearm. He had rarely been naked like this with anyone, and he didn't want to dress yet. Draco's eyes raked across his body, lingering every everywhere, so he figured the longer he stayed naked, the longer he could stay, period. This was how he would steal some time while they were like this, after the storm.

"Hmm. I guess I think about what belongs. Like, sweat is fine. And then I think about what doesn't belong, like come. Or spit," he shrugged, "you know."

"Does that mean you cleaned your come out of my mouth too?" Draco asked coquettishly, batting his eyelashes, and fuck if Harry would ever get that image out of his head. 

"No," Harry said. He held his eyes. "I'm just cleaning the outside bits. Once it's inside, it belongs there."

Later, at home in the shower, the memory of this very moment brought Harry off again. The moment when something he'd said made Draco’s jaw drop open. 

_"Once it's inside, it belongs there."_

The words' implications; how what wasn't said loomed so much louder than what he'd allowed himself to say.

 _I belong inside you,_ Harry thought. _We belong inside each other._

* * *

The first week into the arrangement, the fake Galleon in Harry's possession warmed once. He found himself frowning as the numerals on the coin reflected a time late in the night, so late that by the time Draco would leave, it would technically be early in the morning. The request first sent a thrill through Harry, followed by a pang of annoyance. To what end did they have to meet so late? 

This was the question he pondered as he sat in what he still thought of as Dumbledore’s office, though it was simply the headmaster’s, and therefore, now Minerva McGonagall’s. It was the first meeting with the Hogwarts board of governors of the school term, and the agenda was light, so his mind frequently wandered. He was so bothered by the mystery of Draco’s late-night request that he remained unaware that his glasses were speckled with rain until Pomona Sprout pointed it out to him over their break for lunch. The problem was, he realized while listlessly pushing around his spoon through an Irish stew that held no thrill for him, that no matter what the time was, if Draco asked it, he'd answer. That was how deep his want went, and Draco clearly knew it too. 

He waited until six before responding, his only means of showing both restraint and irritation. Still, he knew his response delivered a promise of what was to come, showed his continued eagerness, knew that somewhere, Draco's coin warmed like hot coal through his trouser's pockets and that something about that excited Draco too. And something odd happened when Draco arrived, not even a whisper of apology on his lips for the time—Harry's anger melted away. They sat and talked politely for a while, didn't even make it away from the same dining room table that had been the setting of their first encounter. Draco laved at Harry's cock until he came, shuddering down his throat, and Harry pushed him flat on the tabletop, sucking him down to the root, memorizing each filthy word he whispered into the near-darkness. Harry sat on the table and waved goodbye when he left, his shoes hanging from his fingertips, crooked smiles on both their faces.

It was strange, electric, audacious. It was wild, and as Harry climbed into his bed, his body thrumming with happiness, he thought that it was nice to have something to look forward to again. It was the first time in a long time he’d had that. 

The next week, the call came every other day. Draco took the lead in requesting company, always in the late evening or night, and Harry decided he wasn't going to ask why, as that would open him up for ridicule and reveal a level of care that Draco would probably find trite, or worse, stifling. He didn't need to know what Draco did with his evenings, didn't get to ask that question. He wondered if someone else was worming their way into Draco's life—if he were going for dinners, the cinema—whatever it was he liked to do with other men. These other men were nameless and faceless, but in Harry's imagination, they were suave and gorgeous, stockily built Daddies and spry, well-dressed twinks and everything in-between, all of them vying for Draco's time. He added runs to his morning routine, lacing up and pounding his knees into painful submission as he tried to outrun thoughts of these others, making Draco smile, touching him, of other mouths making him gasp and groan. Harry's response-time to the call of the Galleon was quickly cut down by half.

Draco always made a big show of saying hello. No matter the time, he politely asked for a cup of tea or a spritzer when he was greeted by Kreacher, inquiring about the cellars' state or the facade in the garden wall that needed fixing, or some other household oddity that eluded Harry is its perceived importance to the two of them. He forced Harry to join him in doing it until they'd eventually say their goodbyes and set to explore the rest of the house, expanding their meeting places to the lounge and then all those other rooms Harry didn't bother to give names to. 

"What room is this?" Draco asked on a cold, rainy evening in early October. The earth outside was gilded in yellowed leaves, and the wet scent of decay drifted in from the window he cracked open, his long fingers smoothing the edge of the mouldering tapestry to the side.

"Dunno," Harry said. "Attic room that's for storing old shite I haven't gotten round to sorting?"

"That'll never do," Draco said. His forehead wrinkled as his keen eyes took in every detail the room had to offer. It made Harry prickly; this sustained attention to his places, his things. 

"What does it matter?" he asked. He didn't mean for it to come out angry, but it did, and Draco glanced back at him, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

"It doesn't," he said, voice steely. "But it could. It wouldn't hurt for you to care for the things you keep."

Harry twisted his drink in his hands, guilty for having snapped at him. 

"This whole place is steeped in a lot of memories I'd rather forget," he said, surprising himself by admitting to it. "My godson—your cousin, Teddy—his parents took this room back when the Order used this place for headquarters. They're gone now."

Harry's throat tightened as he looked around at the walls, the muslin-covered furniture and dark glass of the empty cabinets Kreacher was fast losing the battle against dust to. "I suppose I hope that one day it'll all look different and I won't have to remember the bad parts. But I'm afraid to change anything because I don't want to forget the good parts, either."

Draco hummed.

“As though by magic?” he said, gentler this time. Harry nodded. 

"You could start by giving it a name,” Draco spoke to Harry though he regarded the bare mattress in the far corner of the room, and Harry had a creeping fear that he’d want them to do things on it, and the thought made his skin crawl. 

“Keep the good where you can see it, and clear the bad away. Take it from me—you can’t go on living in a mausoleum forever.” 

Harry swallowed thickly. This room was mostly empty, easy to handle, but there were so many others—Sirius’, and a chair favoured by Mad-Eye, and the place where Snape would sit but never eat—and contemplating all that loss preserved in the house threatened to overtake him. He wished Draco was gone so he could do something reckless—get drunk and fly so high that the cold air made his fingers burn, or to run until he shook, until he vomited, and only then force himself to manage the long way home. 

He must have started shaking, or the walls did, but Draco didn’t leave. He took Harry's hand as he walked backwards until he was flush up against the wall, his face thrown into bright whites and inky black shadows from the light of the sconce lit high above them. He wrapped his arms around Harry and kissed him, slowly and sweetly, his fingers strong against his neck and pressing insistently into his back. He kissed him until he was breathless, and his glasses fogged up, and Draco pulled them off, shutting the tines and tucking them away.

"I can make you forget, for a while," Draco said quietly. Harry's breath hitched at his words, offered plainly. "You can use me to forget."

That night ended in a blur of rutting, using their hands to bring the other over the edge. Harry finished on Draco's stomach, one hand bunched in his shirt, the other fisting his prick as Draco did the same for him, the wet, squelching sounds obscenely loud in the otherwise silent house. When Harry stumbled back, he was sure Draco blinked away tears, and he pretended not to see, spent overly long fixing himself back up. He’d left a lovebite where Draco's neck met his shoulder, and when he offered to heal it, Draco brushed him off.

"I like them," he said, attempting to contort in such a way that he could see the mark without a mirror. "I like it when you lose yourself, Potter. You're much more fun when you're not so buttoned up."

“Thank you,” Harry said. He didn’t know why, but he felt like Draco had given him some sort of gift. Draco shook his head. 

“Don’t,” he said, and he left without a proper goodbye. 

Draco didn't know that there wasn't a chance in hell that Harry could sleep before these visits, but he made a great fuss of pretending to; he greeted Draco in boxers and tattered band t-shirts, hair mussed and glasses missing. When he was especially impatient to get on with it, he opted for joggers, no top, and a dour scowl. 

Draco hardly seemed to care how he was dressed, though his eyes did roam over Harry's chest and arms when he thought Harry wasn't looking. He was always perfectly dressed, and regardless of the hour, on alert.

"Do you know whose portrait that is? You could find out. Your solicitor will have the paperwork, now you own the place."

"Why would any person need so many stuffed burrowing owls, I ask you?"

"People use turmeric wrong in potions all the time. You wouldn't _believe_ how many orange infants I have to brew up antidotes for."

Harry barely spoke during this time, his stomach clenched in knots. This seemed to suit Draco just fine, as he made small-talk to fill in all the silent spaces. Harry's quiet was partly because he was often exhausted. Victoria hadn't been kidding about the need to double-up on events, and Harry quickly became used to dragging himself downstairs each morning only to notice new names and places scratched onto fluttering notes affixed to the calendar. They arrived by owl at all times, each one like a tiny, annoying butterfly that detached itself from the bird’s plumage to float over to the calendar and darken Harry's day. He groaned over the additions while he ate toast and eggs, often poking at bruise sucked into his skin by Draco the night previous. He always healed his own for fear of being caught out by a nosy make-up artist. And while it baffled his friends and bothered Draco, no matter how late the request or how high his level of annoyance at being asked to do something that made him uncomfortable, he always showed up.

Board meetings, presentations, lunches with bureaucrats, incessant requests from Robards on behalf of the Auror division, interviews with reporters, staying on top of the publisher's needs. His pet project—the only one he actually cared about—was "the home for lonely waifs,” as Victoria liked to put it. The project was due to break ground in the spring, and it took a lot more glad-handing than he'd expected to get all the right people on board. Even with vaults near-to-overflowing, even with most of the money put up by him, money he didn't want or need from endorsements, from visiting fees, from showing face at events—it was more work than he'd expected. By the time Draco came over most nights, Harry's eyes were dry from reading, and his body ached from the way he threw it into training, pushing it during any spare minute. When he was exhausted, his mind was at its quietest, and he liked it that way. It was that or drinking, and he wouldn't let himself be drunk with Draco, or rather, he didn't want to be. When he lost that battle, he'd burn the alcohol off from his blood with a spell shortly before Draco exited the fireplace, swallowing the want to shout from how it set his nerves aflame. The windows cracked and popped in their frames whenever Harry did this, as though it upset the house, and Kreacher would avoid him for hours on end. Whether this was out of pity or annoyance, Harry didn't bother asking.

If he was honest with himself, part of the reason he stayed quiet when Draco came over was that he was so eager to see him that he could scarcely breathe. He loved listening to Draco talk, to his low voice, reserved, lilting. It was an erotic thrill, listening to him speak.

He took delight in watching Draco's hands move through the air—never gloved anymore, not with Harry. Draco spoke with his hands a lot, elegant fingers tapping the glass of his drink or drawing shapes in the air. Harry learned that Draco read a lot and cared a lot about all sorts of things. He quizzed Harry on how he planned to vote on the rights of Beings in the coming Wizengamot session, and _why_. He had an almost fanatical concern about Kreacher's well-being, and the treatment of house-elves in general, nudging Harry to care too, as though his de-radicalization from the Death Eater's purity mania hadn't left him neutral but had instead planted him firmly in what was seen by pureblooded society as radical, left-wing thought. Harry bit his tongue from saying what he thought regarding this about-face—that this was partially a late-blooming bout of teenage defiance against his parents, and partly fuelled by guilt. Harry was smart enough to keep these thoughts to himself, and honestly, what did it matter, why Draco had come around to reason, to goodness, to the concept of equality? 

Whatever the reason, Harry couldn't escape that Draco was smart— _much too smart for you_ , he often thought. He interrogated Harry's beliefs as much as he criticized his lack of them, made him question why he cared about what he cared about, needled him to think critically. He pushed, and Harry often found himself pushing back, but sometimes he listened instead. Because more often than not, he discovered that Draco was right, but it didn’t bother him anymore, possibly because there wasn’t a crowd watching them as they argued. It didn’t seem like much, but he’d begun clearing the spaces that had become unwitting shrines to people passed—like finally removing a mouldering mug of tea from a side table and cleaning it, a cup that had been the last that Remus had sipped from. And in its place, he placed a framed photo instead, a happy moment, and suddenly the side table went from an unused thing to space he could bear to look at, if only sometimes, if only barely. Draco didn’t comment on the changes, but Harry knew he noticed them, and sometimes he picked up the photos and studied them, smiling. Draco spoke enough for both of them, really, and Harry didn't really mind it at all. 

The tease of it. The waiting.

Because eventually, Draco would put down his glass and say, "So."

And Harry would mirror him and say the same. "So." His pulse started racing at this point. He'd watch Draco lick a drop of moisture from his lips, watch while he pointedly wouldn't look at him, surveying their surroundings.

At long last, Draco would close the distance and touch Harry with a disciplined hand at his shoulder or a faint graze to his bicep. He would pull in close and say something like, "So what it is that made you agree to have me over tonight, Potter? Was it something that you wanted me to do to you on that sofa?"

Or he'd lean in behind Harry, breath hot at the name of his neck, and say, "Will we need a bed tonight, Potter? Or would you prefer taking to your knees right here and sucking me off? Because I’ve been thinking of that all day."

Harry started by saying what he thought Draco wanted to hear. 

"Whatever you want," he'd say. 

"Your call.”

“I don't care."

"Whatever's easiest."

Draco would run a hand through his hair to make him shiver. Would plant a gentle kiss to the edge of his mouth, and say, "I think you do care, Potter,” or, “You’ve got to pick, Potter, don’t keep us waiting all night.”

It was still _Potter_ for him. The desire to be called by his given name was so strong in Harry that it burned in his gut. It was a fire that each _Potter_ threw a fresh log onto.

"Don't call me Potter right now," he finally snapped, “it’s always _Potter this_ and _Potter that_ with you.”

He’d skived off early from a pub night with old school friends to see Draco, and he brought his frustrations with them home with him. Harry found it tedious, how half of the comments that came his way were about his single status and what was to be done about it, and the other half lamented that they didn't get a chance to see him enough, that he was turning into a workaholic hermit before their very eyes, even though he'd made an effort, even though he was _fucking there in the first place_. He bit back comments that they were late to the party—he'd been overworked ever since he'd had to overcome Herculean tasks against his will as a fourteen-year-old, as far as he was concerned. And he wasn’t really single, was he, but he couldn’t go explaining to them that it was for the best that he do what he was doing and purge his urges with someone who he wouldn’t get too close too, wouldn’t hurt too badly. Who wanted to hear about what a broken, messy, disgusting thing he was anyway, and who among his friends would understand the writhing ball of feelings he had for Draco? His face hurt from fake-smiling through it all, and the four whiskeys he downed hadn't done anything positive for his temper. 

"It feels like school all fucking over again when you say it like that."

Draco gave Harry a lazy, sensual smile. "I take it that you don't look back at our school days in a carnal way?"

"No," Harry frowned.

"I'm hurt," Draco said, and he kind of sounded it, though the face he put on was overly theatrical. Covering real emotions with oversized versions was a tactic of his that Harry was coming to learn. He brushed his fingertips along his collarbones because he knew Harry liked them, especially; all his delicate parts. "You never once wanked over me—"

"No," Harry said, "fucking stop pushing it. You say my name like it's your favourite curse word."

“Pity," Draco said, annoyed now. "I mean, I, for one, wouldn't mind throwing on a Slytherin tie every once in a while and playing detention, but we can't all be exciting, I suppose. Some of us have grossly underdeveloped imaginations.”

He bit his lip, thinking. "Can I call you a pet name, then? Could I call you pet?"

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. His stomach was sour, and he wanted Draco to go just as much as he wanted him to stay, but a different version of Draco—one that was kinder and more pliable, less bloody difficult all the time. 

"Why can't you just call me Harry?"

Draco swallowed, silent. He became spiteful when rebuked, the same as when he was younger. 

"Because you want me to, and I'm not your sycophant," he spat. 

"You don't have to be a sycophant not to call me by my surname," Harry was practically growling. He shouldn't have let himself be alone with Draco while he was tipsy, but he'd run out of time before Draco was stepping out of the flames, already pulling his cape from his shoulders and calling for Kreacher, and there was nothing for it. His anger sloshed around inside of him like hot oil. 

"Because you haven't earned it," Draco barked. He realized he'd said too much, eyes widening before the mask came down. Something squirmed in Harry's stomach—saying that he hadn't earned it implied that he could. But how?

"And because I don't feel like it," Draco added petulantly.

“Sure, fine then, call me pet if it keeps you spitting out Potter every fucking third word," Harry said. 

_Pet,_ he could do. _Potter_ reminded him of what he was to Draco. Of what he wasn’t.

Draco stormed over to him and pulled his face up with a finger under his chin. He straightened to his full height and looked down at Harry, mustering bravado to cover for his momentary slip into something like softness. 

"Will we need a bed tonight then, pet?” he asked, and Harry shivered at the word, and he knew then in a way he’d only guessed at before that he was a proper little deviant, the way he wanted to be Draco’s favourite plaything. “Or,” he spoke slowly, “will the floor suffice?" 

Harry was hard before he even knew the answer to the question.

Harry felt that these questions were tests he was bound to fail, and he would look to Draco to try to ascertain the right answer. Increasingly, they squabbled until finally, one night, Draco’s patience expired, and he ground out, volume rising dangerously, "Jesus fucking _Christ_ , I'm not asking you to agree with me.”

“What do you want then?” Harry yelled back. 

“I'm asking you to make a bloody choice for once!"

The floor beneath them vibrated with Harry’s unbridled magic looking for release. It was getting worse, the outbursts. Draco was like a fever he'd caught, a constant, low burn simmering under his skin. Before Draco could taunt him for his loss of control, he said, "Fine, I pick this room," and Draco had simply smiled. 

"Sofa it is, then," he said. 

He kissed Harry with a passion that belied all his gentle introductions, kissing him like he was starving for it, like Harry nourished him. They undressed so quickly that Harry fell over himself in his attempt to lose his pants, trousers, socks and shoes in one go. In no time at all, they were naked; Harry sat on the couch, Draco kneeling in his lap as they jerked each other to completion. Harry worried that the tooth-freshening charm wasn't doing enough to combat the french onion soup he'd had for dinner, and their teeth still clacked on more than one occasion, but it was fast and hot and left both of them panting when it was all over. Draco kissed the spot where he'd left claw-marks on Harry's shoulder.

"Do you have a salve for these?" he asked, tapping the swollen red lines. Harry shook his head.

"No. Why?"

Draco nuzzled into his neck. "I could make you one," he said into Harry's skin. Sex made him handsy—he sniffed and licked Harry when they were done, maintaining skin contact until forced to break it. His hair tickled Harry's shoulder, but he didn't mind it when it came with Draco's warm weight sat in his lap.

"Don't worry about it," Harry said, head lolling back. Draco licked at his throat and then kissed the wet spot. "You're the only one who'll see them."

Draco stopped halfway to kissing the spot again. He froze, as he sometimes did, and then he unfurled, got up and summoned his clothes back from the places they'd been strewn. 

"What?" Harry said to his pale back, stretching as he bent over to step into his trousers, pantsless. Draco shook his head, offered a thin-lipped smile over his shoulder.

"Nothing," he said. "It’s getting late. See you soon, pet." Harry watched, confused and strangely hurt as he walked out the door without a backwards glance. In this way, whatever was happening between them was complicated. They still found ways to break one another, but it was like playing that game _Operation_ that Dudley had when Harry was young. He tried to avoid the painful bits, all the topics that were clearly off the table, and Draco obviously did the same, and even so, they still sometimes said or did things that prodded open old wounds, the other lashing out as a reflex.

In the same way, though, it was easy. There wasn't much room for genuine questions or answers about anything that wasn't mundane or very general or sexual. The blank spaces around what they did talk about made it very clear what they didn't—the past, their emotions, their families, their fears, their wants, and the spectre of intimacy with others. 

Harry revisited the rooms they frequented the next day and noted what had changed. A threadbare carpet, fulsome once again, his bare feet sinking into plush fibres. How the runners in the hallways were becoming pillowy soft, muffling his footsteps when he walked the halls. Where a window, once assumed to be stuck permanently closed, would suddenly open a crack, the earthy scents of fall rushing in to clear the stuffy air.

The kitchen saw the most improvement, as that was the space that Draco most often frequented as he came and went by the Floo there. It quickly transformed into a warm and inviting space begging to be utilized. The wood accents gleamed under the soft glow of _Lumos_ charms that calibrated just-so to Harry's needs, the stone floors warm to the touch, even first thing in the morning. Kreacher was so inspired that he moved back in full-time, the scents of his attempts at baking filling the house with the sharp tang of rye bread and the cinnamony warmth of pumpkin pasties. Harry caught him humming one morning and sent the memory to Hermione to prove that it was real and not a figment of his imagination.

Kreacher also took to dropping none-too-subtle hints to Harry about how he felt about the _Malfoy-Black heir_.

"The Master is doing well to be good to the young heir," Kreacher croaked early one Sunday morning. Harry cracked open one eye to a croissant and a steaming mug of coffee resting on his bedside table. Harry fumbled for his glasses as Kreacher picked up an empty bottle of Firewhisky from the floor and vanished it. Harry attempted to sit up and failed, falling with a groan back into bed, hungover and embarrassed to be caught so obviously in shambles by the elf.

"What makes you think I'm not, Kreacher," he grumbled. "Also, what kind of a good morning greeting is this? Why are we talking about Draco, first thing?"

Harry was resting his eyes when a monstrously hard flick of Kreacher's claw-like nails stung the centre of his forehead, momentarily stunning him. He rarely dared to touch Harry, commonly opting to use his words to get his disappointment across. 

"What was that for?" he cried out. Kreacher didn't flinch.

"You is not seeing him during the daylight, master," Kreacher said. "He is deserving more than being entertained in a house!" 

Harry stuffed the croissant into his mouth and cringed as its burnt underside coated his tongue in ash. Kreacher didn't do things by halves, and as Harry spat the croissant back into his hand, he looked over to the cup of black coffee with trepidation, reasonably sure that he'd find it either scalding hot or tepid. It was probably made with his bathwater—or Kreacher's bathwater, or something liquid and somehow even worse. 

"Kreacher, you're right, but could we not right now—"

"He isn't even offering _food_ to the heir! And no gifts, and the house would provide Harry Potter with such gifts, gifts worthy of the heir’s status." Kreacher crossed his arms and sniffed. "Kreacher has seen generations of Blacks, all at courtship. This is not how courtship is being done properly."

Harry watched, agog, as Kreacher stalked from the room, one hand surreptitiously scratching at an unknown location underneath his toga. He was right, of course. The growing pit in Harry's stomach was owed only in part to his excessive drinking the night before; the sinking feeling within him was wholly attributable to the fact that Harry knew full well that Draco deserved better than nights spent frotting on dusty furniture, never even invited into the comfort of a bed. Harry had made up some rule in his mind that a bed meant that final kind of sex, and he wasn’t ready for that, couldn’t be sure that he wanted it with Draco. For it to be _transactional._

At the same time, Harry didn't want to try too hard. Why get his hopes up when it was obvious that Draco would tire of him eventually anyway? It was clear to Harry that Draco was out of his league. He was quick and witty and so stupidly gorgeous, and while perhaps not obviously so, he had a streak of kindness in him and deep wells of hurt that deserved to be shored up with compassion and care. 

_You're selfish,_ his brain helpfully supplied at least once daily, as it did then. _He's going to regret the day he met you, and you could stop this anytime and save him the pain, and the trouble, and you won't because you're greedy, and—_

Harry pushed himself up to sit, glad that he was already in joggers, and toed into the same trainers he'd kicked off the night before. He was almost relieved to feel grimy, his mouth a desert and his brain precarious within his skull. Kreacher's lecture made him anxious to get on with it—to push himself through a run that would probably leave him heaving by Camden, and he'd deserve it too, because he wasn't treating the young heir like anything more than a vessel to get off with, and that feeling left Harry feeling something too dark even to name.

* * *

**Notes:** *casually drops an 18.5k chapter*. Well, this thing just keeps growing now, doesn't it? Many thanks to Grammarly for catching _most_ of my errors. It's been a hell of a couple of weeks and I'm tired, but always glad to come back to this story and share it with you, faithful reader. I love your comments, and kudos do give me a sick satisfaction, so please leave me either if it pleases you.

Next chap up by **Friday, October 23**.

xx


	9. Sex and Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit to Harry's bedroom, a haircut, and boundaries are set, and crossed.

**Tuesday, October 21, 2003**

On a late-night visit midweek, when Draco trailed a finger across Harry's shoulder and offered him the choice between a sofa or the floor, Harry had a plan.

"How about my bed," he said. His voice cracked from nerves, which Draco raised a brow over but didn't comment on, luckily. Harry tried to pretend that the invitation wasn't as big a deal as they both knew it to be.

"The whole house is getting a makeover aside from my room." He tried for an offhand delivery even as his heart drummed a staccato beat against his ribs.

The barest flicker of surprise went over Draco's face. "The only person you have to blame for that is yourself," he said. He looked to the ceiling, clearly trying to temper his excitement with his usual mask of boredom. "Apparate us up, won't you? I don't want to waste time on the stairs."

He took Harry's proffered arm, and with a _crack,_ they were suddenly in Harry's darkened bedroom, only the low yellowed light of a few candlelit lamps illuminating the space. It took a moment for Harry's eyes to adjust to the dimness of his room, which he was quickly thankful for. He'd tidied in preparation for the moment, but the standard to which he'd brought the room felt distinctly less once Draco was there, and Harry kicked himself from not being more thorough with the cleaning charms. At least the linens were clean, and the bed made, and his laundry was hidden away in a wicker hamper. The smudges on the mirror over his dresser weren't as noticeable in the low light, and Draco wasn't paying any attention to those things anyway.

He was drawn to the collection of framed photographs, a blend of Muggle and magical, hung just inside the bedroom door. Most were photos Harry had found within Grimmauld or had been gifted to him over the years. In the centre hung one of the Order from the early Eighties, his parents smiling out from the ranks of so many witches and wizards now passed; another of him with Teddy at barely six months old, cradled in Harry's arms. Harry was gaunt in that picture, but when he looked at his gurgling godson and smiled for the camera, his face was briefly less haunted. Below was his favourite of he, Hermione and Ron, eating takeaway curry on top of cardboard boxes from when they'd moved in together at their flat, a photo taken by George, and on they went, a short collection of memories from the last couple of years mingling with those from decades ago.

Draco stood and silently took them all in.

"Where are you?" he asked. "Haven't you any photos from when you were young?" He held his arms close to his body, calmly gazing at the treasured milestones of Harry's life.

"No," Harry answered. "I don't." He didn't care to elaborate, and he knew that Draco wouldn't push.

_Family, the past: off-limits, off-limits._

"Pity," Draco said under his breath, peering closely at a photo of Harry backstage on his graduation day. "There's about a thousand tucked into photo books at the manor, to complement the hundred or so mum had framed."

Harry's interest was peaked, though he was careful not to let it show.

_Maybe not completely off-limits._

"I'll bet you were a cute baby," Harry said as he walked up behind him and hooked his jaw over his left shoulder.

"You'd think so. Fat," Draco said, smiling, "and so often in frilly dresses, it really should have been less surprising that I came out as gay as they come."

Draco leaned back into Harry, a new show of familiarity. They'd developed unspoken rules about touching, like how they did not kiss hello or hug goodbye, but this was the third time Harry had wrapped his arms around him this way, and so far, he hadn't been chastened. This time though, Draco flinched under him and recoiled when he tightened his grip.

"What's happened?" Harry asked as he drew his hands back, fingers splayed wide. He'd thought this experiment in touch was going well, but Draco's reaction lit a fire under his anxieties.

_It's not normal, and he doesn't like it, why can't you see that? You don't know how to touch like normal people, look, you've repulsed him—_

Draco held his burned arm closely to his chest, a deep furrow between his brows. Harry recognized the wince as deriving from pain and wondered if somehow his magic was rebelling against him—perhaps he'd subconsciously stung Draco with his touch.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"

Draco shook his head; eyes squeezed shut. "Nerve pain," he said and then pursed his lips on a long exhale.

"Oh," Harry said, lowering his hands. Draco breathed in deeply, and the lines around his mouth smoothed once more. The way his hand bunched up in a fist, Harry could tell the pain was still with him—he'd only gone and controlled his reaction to it.

"It acts up sometimes. It gets worse as time goes on—damn nerves having the temerity to regrow," he added with a crooked, almost smile that didn't travel to his eyes.

Harry still hadn't asked about how Draco had come to earn his scar, and the fact that Draco hadn't offered up the story loomed over their conversations like a low, dark cloud. Harry opened his mouth to ask a question, but a single look from Draco turned it into an apology instead.

"I'm still sorry," Harry offered.

"Don't be," Draco said, letting the arm drop to his side. "It's not your fault."

Harry knew better than to push—Draco shared information in morsels, as prizes, and Harry would be rewarded once he had earned it.

"Can I help?" he asked. The look on Draco's face became open, revealing that other Draco he so desperately wanted—the soft, human one that took his breath away.

"Massage helps some. The pain potions I won't let myself take." He gave a self-deprecating smile as he let his shoulders find the wall to lean on. "With you around, I prefer other forms of distraction."

Harry raked a hand through his hair, sure that he left it tousled and looking a fright. He wanted to argue with Draco that he should take better care of himself, should let Harry know if he was hurting, but knew it would be a moot point. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he'd been working up to ask for over a week.

"I think I can provide that," Harry said. Draco's eyes lit up, his mouth curving into a faint smile.

"What's on the menu tonight, pet?" he asked, and a surge of erotic energy pulsed through Harry, from his spine to his lower belly to the base on his cock. He shivered as he one took one of Draco's hands in his own, interlocking their fingers.

It felt easier to ask for things when touching, under cover of darkness, or once their clothes were off.

Somehow now, though, the words dried up in Harry's throat. He opened his mouth, but he couldn't force them out, no matter how many times he'd practiced in the mirror earlier.

"Potter?" Draco said his name softly, but Harry couldn't speak. He dropped his hand and walked the length of the room, leaning against the low dresser with his head bowed. Dust clung to it, thin but present when he dragged a finger through it. He sighed, suddenly overwhelmed, tired. It was stupid, all of it, both what he wanted so deeply it ached, and how impossible it felt for him to ask for it. The floorboards creaked as Draco moved too, and when Harry looked up into the mirror, Draco was there in the reflection, sitting patiently on his bed. He wore the white button-down shirt and grey trousers that were his work uniform, loafers lined up neatly at the edge of Harry's bed.

"You can tell me. I promise you, I won't laugh." When Harry raised a brow, Draco tipped his head back and forth, considering something, revealing the long column of his throat. "Well, not much anyway."

Harry huffed an uneasy laugh, his green eyes reflected darkly in the glass. Draco's were eerily light when they fell back to meet his, the rest of him pristine in the mirror. He looked so beautiful, and Harry was terrified to scare him off. What would he do if this was the first and last time he had Draco in his bed?

"What if I showed you?" Harry asked. "Can I show you what I'm thinking of instead?" Draco tilted his head, his eyes never leaving Harry's in the mirror.

"Of course," he said. "Look at me, and for the love of god, relax."

Harry turned and took a deep breath. It was easy enough to bring the memory of the fantasy that he'd wanked to uncountable times to the forefront of his mind. He looked into grey eyes and let the whisper of Draco's mind peer inside his own, like a gentle breeze rustling only the edges of a curtain.

 _I said, relax_. Draco's voice lilted in Harry's mind. Tension dripped from him, shoulder muscles loosening from where they'd bunched up under his ears. The fantasy popped up as clearly as if it were a real memory. In it, Harry was facedown, naked and spread wide on all fours across the same bed that the real Draco now sat on. Dream Draco knelt behind him, his mouth to Harry's arse, making him squirm and moan and thrash with pleasure. Draco left Harry's mind with a gasp, a slow, devilish smile breaking out wide across his face.

"Oh, pet," Draco cooed, "come here to me." He held out a hand, and Harry walked to him and took it in his own, threading their fingers together once more.

"You'll look so beautiful beneath me like that," Draco said, and Harry exhaled a long breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. His stomach was in knots, so incredibly ready to be laughed at, and yet here was Draco looking at him for all the world like he'd hung the moon.

"Yeah?" he breathed, "you want to?"

"I'm dying to." Draco gave one last squeeze to Harry's fingers before letting go and leaning back onto the coverlet. "Strip."

"I—" Harry coughed and rubbed at the back of his neck as a deep flush came over his entire body. "I don't know how."

"Don't overthink it," Draco spoke quietly like Harry would startle otherwise. "Just strip for me, pet, and it'll be perfect. There's no one else watching, and I want it so much."

Harry took a deep breath and lifted his arms above his head, pulling up the back of his t-shirt and removing it. His glasses came off with it, and he replaced them on his face, both terrified of looking at Draco while needing to be able to see him, the feral look of want on his face.

"Honestly, are you punching brick walls when I'm not around?" Draco said, and Harry huffed a laugh, averting his eyes.

"Don't be so demure, darling," Draco drawled. Harry shook his head, eyes trained studiously at his feet—white socks today, matching ones, at that.

"The last set of chin-ups, I do those special, just for you," Harry said. Draco's gaze lit up his nerve endings. It was so strong it was a form of touch itself.

Draco stared at him with open abandon. "I enjoy the effort you put into all of them, don't you worry about that," he teased, and Harry huffed a little laugh at that, a tiny bit of tension seeping away.

He knew he looked good, technically; knew that the thickened swells of his biceps drove Draco wild and that the sinewy muscle of his torso, the tense spread of his shoulders and thighs, and his calves carved from hours upon hours spent sprinting over London's uneven pavement and cobblestones, he knew that they turned Draco on. That Harry had never felt handsome or particularly fit didn't matter, not to Draco, and especially not right now. That he avoided mirrors as a rule, still didn't like to touch at his own waxy scars, couldn't bring himself to order and use the creams that would lessen their tightness because that would mean acknowledging that he wished for them to go away—those were troubles for another day.

"You're bloody gorgeous," Draco said. Harry kept his gaze averted, hoping that Draco couldn't hear his self-deprecating thoughts. He unbuttoned his jeans, tugging down the fly with hands that trembled only a little. These were pulled off along with his pants all in one go, and he took the time to peel off his socks before he stood again, hands awkward at his sides.

"Fuck," Draco said, momentarily losing himself as he stared openly at Harry's exposed cock. His soft prick and bollocks hung heavy between his legs, the shaft just beginning to thicken under Draco's salacious stare. Draco palmed his own through the thin wool of his charcoal grey trousers, the outline growing mouthwateringly thick.

"Come here and give me a taste."

Harry walked forwards as Draco sat up, reaching for him. Harry gasped as he made contact and pulled at his shaft with his perfectly manicured fingers. Harry tucked a long lock of his corn silk hair behind his ear, breathing out shakily as Draco slid his foreskin down over the glans and back up again, getting him hard in an instant, looking up to Harry's face to share a smile.

"Nothing to it," Draco said quietly, mouthing the side of Harry's prick. "Stripping. When you do it for me, you can't do it wrong. I love to see you naked; you must know that."

Harry's heart felt full to bursting, and then Draco ducked his head, and his eyelids blinked shut as he took the tip of Harry's prick into his mouth, and Harry could hardly think anymore. He steadied himself with one hand at Draco's shoulder and the other cupped his head, glad for the feel of the silky strands beneath his fingertips. He was fast becoming obsessed with touching Draco's hair. He wanted to soap and wash it for him, craved the moments when Draco collapsed on top of him, and the strands would briefly tickle his nose. The thought of tugging at it was beyond—Draco would never allow it—so Harry entertained himself with smoothing it under his hand and letting it cascade through his fingers whenever he had the chance.

Draco bobbed his head languorously as the air in the room began to grow warm from the combined heat of their bodies. His tongue applied just the right amount of pressure to the vein along the underside of Harry's prick, something that would fast be his undoing.

_Too fast, too fast—you need to make this last._

"Jesus, Draco, I'll come in a minute if you keep this up," Harry warned. Draco, forever devilish only moaned and took him low, almost to the root, and Harry pushed up onto his toes, trying to force the last half-inch. Just as Harry's balls pulled up tight against his body, he sucked off, having brought him to full hardness only to leave his cock ruddy and wet, bobbing free in the space between them.

"You're a tow-headed, cocksucking wonder; you know that?" Harry said. Draco laughed, deep yet sparkling.

"Never forget it. On the bed with you, bent over the side here." Draco gave Harry's hip a double-pat as he scuttled over to make room and then stood. Harry was wary—that wasn't exactly what he'd shown Draco in his mind. Draco caught his hesitation and rolled his eyes.

"You trust me, yes?" he asked, his fingers loosening the first few buttons of his shirt to reveal the creamy skin of his collarbones. The dark smudge of a lovebite Harry had sucked into him the last time they'd seen each other stood out, blackberry purple on his chest, and his blood heated on sight.

 _Mine_ , he thought, _Jesus fuck, you're mine._

Harry nodded, still feeling uncertain. "Then, you'll bend over the bed as I asked, and I'll take good care of you." Draco's tone softened as he touched Harry's hip, thumb rubbing a circle. "Promise."

The touch reassured Harry, somehow more intimate than a kiss. Harry sunk down, glad to have a bit of carpet to do so on rather than having to kneel on the hard walnut floors. The position forced his cock downwards, rubbing against the soft cotton coverlet, spreading the first drips of his precome into the fabric. He'd clean them in the morning; it was far from him to care about that now.

He bent over with a deep exhale, turning his face to the head of the bed, his vision nothing but pillows, and pulled his arms in, bent tightly to his sides. Draco stood behind him, a socked toe pushing one of Harry's knees outwards.

"Open up and make some room for me, now," he said. Harry screwed his eyes shut and did as he was told, spreading wide. Draco whistled, taking to his knees behind Harry, the floorboards creaking beneath them both.

"Look at your perfect fucking arse," he whispered. He stood again, and suddenly his breath was hot on Harry's neck as he curled over him. Harry relaxed at the feel of Draco's warm body, his weight a comfort. He took his time like that, clothed, draped over Harry, kissing his neck and shoulders. His erection pressed insistently into the cleft of Harry's arse, separated by layers of fabric.

"I'm so glad to be the first to do this to you," he said, mouthing at Harry's neck until shivers wracked his body. Harry was silent, his heart full even as the pit of embarrassment stayed lodged deep inside of him. Even after all they'd done, this seemed salacious and dirty. But Draco didn't seem to mind it, so who the fuck cared, really?

Draco deftly kissed his way down Harry's back, showing great care and admiration as his hands massaged the planes of muscle stretched between his shoulder blades, taking his time on his ribs, his palms impossibly hot, and then he moved lower, ghosting his breath at the dip of his lower back, and then at his tailbone.

"Did you already do the prep spells?" he murmured into Harry's skin, placing a kiss to the last knob of Harry's spine. Harry shook his head and then remembered himself.

"No," he mumbled into the bedspread. "I don't know them."

"That's alright. I'll do them for you."

Draco nipped the right globe of Harry's arse cheek and then kissed it when Harry yelped at the surprise of teeth against his skin.

"The first is for protection, the second is for cleanliness," he continued, grabbing his wand from where it had rolled towards Harry's elbow. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing for all the world that this was something he'd learned already in some grotty car or alone—but then Draco added, "You're lucky to have me teach you. If you get the pronunciation wrong on the second one, it makes for a _very_ unpleasant few days of sitting. Like rubbing with sandpaper—and god forbid you do as Muggles are forced to," and Harry was chuckling as Draco murmured the incantations, the feeling of which stole his breath away.

"Alright?" he asked, and he took Harry's nod and sounds as acceptable responses. "Lovely. Now, I know it's lacking in your bloodline or something, but pretend for a moment that every inch of you is gorgeous, and I've been dreaming of eating you out for—it doesn't matter for how long—and that there's nothing I want for more than for you to widen your legs and let me play with your arse, and all of this will be possible because you'll _relax_ and accept that I'm in charge. How does that sound?"

Harry squeaked.

"Try again," Draco said, and Harry managed a "Yes," that cost him dearly.

"You'll do well to remember you said that _,_ " Draco said. He knelt on the floor and used his thumbs to pull Harry's cheeks apart, ghosting hot breath where he felt the most exposed, most vulnerable. Harry couldn't help but edge his legs closed, his body rebelling against his mind, arsecheeks stubbornly squeezing tight.

"Get out of your head, pet," Draco said, "or I'll stop."

"Don't," Harry ground out, "please." He was frustrated with Draco for suggesting that this would end before it had begun and frustrated with himself for being unable to let go for once.

Draco huffed. "What if I could make you relax? What if it were my choice that you do it?"

Harry turned to look back at him, confused where this train of thought was going. Harry wanted to control his faculties—had to, couldn't imagine giving over power so wholly.

_But you want it. Imagine that feeling. Imagine being able to let go._

Draco's sharp features were made all the more severe because he'd pulled his hair back into a tight chignon at some point. His eyes were cut-crystal, calm, and at that moment, seemingly all-knowing.

"How?" Harry asked.

"Maybe if you don't behave, you get a punishment. A little incentive to be good," he said. He rubbed Harry's skin tenderly under his palm, his gaze dragging over to Harry's arse. "A spanking," he said, and Harry's breath hitched at the thought as Draco smoothed the spot that would presumably take the slap.

Harry's prick found the offer incredibly interesting and throbbed, pulsing against the bedspread beneath him. A trickle of precome dribbled out, and he should have known then that this was a line that once crossed, he wouldn't be able to come back from the other side.

_He's going to ruin you for anyone else. You thought you craved him before he threatened to make you good? Before he called you pet?_

"How does that sound?" Draco asked, and Harry nodded, knowing his eyes were wide and probably telecasting his lust as well as the thrill of fear he felt. "It's alright to say no. Or not be sure."

"I think it's good," The friction between his curiosity and his fear made the words grind slowly from him. "I think..."

Draco waited, rubbing the same spot in lazy circles. He left quiet spaces for Harry to work up the ability to find words, and always, somehow seemed pleased with what he eventually said.

"I think I'd like it if you make me. I think I might need that," Harry said, and Draco's whole face lit up. He gestured with his chin for Harry to turn around again.

"Get out of your head then, or you'll get a spanking," Draco said, and Harry shivered, glad to hear that Draco sounded absolutely wrecked. "Now, I want you to stay open for me. No fidgeting, no closing your thighs. Understood?"

"Y-yes," Harry stuttered, and the breaths were tingling at his skin again, and he was trying not to let reflexes get the better of him when Draco pulled his cheeks apart again, but he bucked him off anyways. An apology was ready on his tongue and an excuse—that it was a bit difficult for him to relax when his arsehole was on display, and he only needed another minute—but all those pretty words were forgotten when Draco spanked his arsecheek hard enough to bruise.

Harry yelped into the silence of the room.

 _"Fuck,_ Draco," he pressed his forehead into the mattress, body curled up like an angered cat. "I'm trying, alright?"

"That'll never do, pet. If you get a spanking, you say _thank you_ , and you apologize, and you try harder next time."

Harry pillowed his forearm on top of his arms, folded into a platform to rest his forehead upon, and as he stared down into the pinstriped pattern of his duvet cover, he thought to himself, _How in the fuck did I end up here?_

But out loud he croaked, "Thank you," as Draco twined his fingers into his hair and tugged, and the ball of pleasure and want that lived low in his belly and in his cock lit up, and Harry knew that he was exactly where he was meant to be, doing exactly what he was meant to do. Sweat broke out across his back—he wanted for Draco to hold him there by his hair for days, forever.

"I'll try harder this time," he spoke at barely a whisper, but Draco heard him and said things he didn't quite make out because he was quickly losing track of reality, but he caught on that he was to lie still and close his eyes and relax, so he tried to do that.

Draco trailed one finger between his legs to play with the whorls of dark hair where Harry's thighs met his sac. "Let it be easy," he said as he ghosted hot breath over Harry's hole, making him want to clench up tightly, but instead, this time, Harry loosed a deep breath.

_You want this, and you might never have it again, not with him, not if you can't let him in. You can do this if you just try. Try harder. Try your fucking hardest._

Harry closed his eyes tightly and made himself go limp, giving himself over, even as all the alarm bells were clanging at full-force, that _this_ was precisely what CONSTANT VIGILANCE had taught him not to do.

 _But maybe,_ a voice in his head mused, a voice so quiet, so small, he'd hardly ever listened to it at all, _you can stop worrying for a while if someone else takes the reins._

"That's it," Draco purred, soothing the skin he'd spanked with wisps of kisses, the barest touching of his lips to the buzzing spot. Harry could scarcely believe the next words out of Draco's mouth, each one gift-wrapped for him.

"You're not in charge, pet. You're my good boy, and I only need for you to trust me, and I'll take such good care of you if you'll only let me."

Harry succumbed, and in doing so, he learned that Draco had a far more wicked mouth than he could have imagined. First, he sucked at Harry's bollocks, taking each one into his mouth in turn. He sucked them in whole and was happy to do so. He hummed as he did, pleased with himself, humming louder when Harry groaned, louder still when Harry swore. He plied Harry's cheeks apart with those long fingers of his and lapped over his hole with strong, firm strokes with the flat of his tongue. He pulled back to tell Harry how delicious he was, how gorgeous, how glad he was to be licking his pink, virgin arse. It was enough to make Harry blush, the way he _narrated_ everything he did serving to make Harry want to simultaneously die of embarrassment while setting his nerves aflame with lust.

"I'm going to lick you till you come, pet. Are you ready?" he asked at long last.

Harry nodded until he remembered that wouldn't do.

 _"Yes."_ The word rasped out of him, an absolute lie. The first teasing lick into his hole from the tip of Draco's tongue had him squealing and pulling away so much that Draco slapped his arse in the same spot as the first time and pulled him roughly back into position only to lick him again and garner the same response. Harry's first "I'm sorry, I'll be better, I promise," was spoken; the second one was bellowed.

"Do you want me to do this or not, pet? Because I can stop," Draco asked, sitting back on his heels, and Harry nodded vociferously.

"Yes, yes," Harry's mouth brushed the duvet. His heart ached with how much he wanted to please Draco and how inadequate he was to fulfil his task. "Please don't stop. I— I'm trying."

"Alright, then. Bite down on something if you need to." Something shifted on the bed as he pulled a pillow down for Harry to lay his head on, but Harry pushed it away. Draco arched a brow but didn't say anything, and Harry knew exactly what he was doing when he placed his left hand into his mouth instead, teeth clamped over the first and second knuckle, thumb along his jawline.

"Jesus fucking Christ, you're going to be the end of me," Draco breathed, and then Harry got back into position, and Draco spread him apart once more.

"Three," he said, flicking his tongue out to tease Harry's hole.

"Two," he whispered as his teeth nipped the skin there, and Harry hissed, every ounce of self-control in his body holding him still and taut.

"One," he said, and then he pressed forwards eagerly with his tongue, and Harry moaned liked he'd never moaned before.

The teeth marks from where he bit down into his hand wouldn't fade for an hour afterwards. The slide of Draco into him was delightful, though he soon pulled out and started as he had before, slower this time, tracing the puffy rim of his hole with the pad of a fingertip while mumbling soothing things. Next came his tongue flat against Harry's furled hole, lapping at it, occasionally swiping up his crease. He kept this up for what felt like forever, pulling off to spit and then spread it from Harry's sac up the crease, noisily, wet, obscene. Then he used the very tip of his tongue to swirl around the outer edges of his rim until Harry's cock was dribbling precome down the blanket, and Draco sat back and marvelled at him, using that wet to tug the length of Harry's prick from between his thighs, purring encouragement all the while.

"You're so fucking beautiful like this, pet," he murmured, one hand pressing slickly into Harry's lower back, and for a moment, Harry _believed_ him when he said it. He pushed his hips up and back, a desperate, "More, please," falling from his lips, and he could have died at the rush of warm air from Draco's laugh before sinking his pointed tongue into him, and Harry moaned like a man possessed as that little pointed muscle explored the inner ridge of his insides. Draco stabbed his tongue in ever deeper, and Harry felt delusional, so turned on that he was sure that his skin itself was on fire, that he would explode if Draco kept at him like this.

"Yes, Jesus, _fuck—"_

Harry stumbled over words that were quickly losing meaning as Draco fucked him with his tongue, his own groans enough to match Harry's. His face nestled in-between Harry's cheeks, scraping them raw, and when Harry howled, he could tell that Draco stopped because he was smiling because though was doing this for Harry, his enthusiasm belied how much he loved to do it too. Harry had never felt freer than when he was pliant under Draco's capable hands, never once feeling like the burden he did in everyday life.

"I need to come, Draco," he pled, tremoring after long minutes of being held on the edge. It was all at once so much, and not enough, and Harry could envision how a tongue could make way for a finger, for more. "Please, I'm begging you please," he said, voice ragged, and that was what broke Draco, the thing that kept him from keeping his promise of licking Harry till he came.

"Turn over," Draco said roughly, stumbling to his feet and ripping off his clothes. He looked as though he were burning from a fever himself, his face pink and wet from the sweat and spit he'd been working into and onto Harry.

"I need—"

He mounted him atop the bed, never finishing the thought. It was clear what they both needed was more contact; to have every available inch of skin touching as they moved and sucked and licked and kissed each other into oblivion. His eyes were glazed, pupils black pools, and he'd never looked more debauched than he did then. They were both frantic with lust and kept trying to move in the same direction, leading to Draco's elbow landing sharply to the inside of Harry's thigh, but all the fumbling in the world didn't change the outcome. They twisted around until they fell side by side, hands a slick blur on each other's pricks, mouths kissing messily.

"You taste so good, I could lick you all fucking day," Draco ground out as he gripped Harry throbbing prick, barely moving his hand.

"I was good?" Harry asked, panting, and Draco squeezed at his arsecheek with one hand, growling into his ear, "You were so fucking good. I like watching your arse spasm for me," and Harry started to come then, mouth open and eyes closed, soundless, overwhelmed. Draco pulled him through, murmuring into his skin, "I love how you taste, pet. It's your taste I want in my mouth, always," and he broke Harry with that. Harry groaned, unable to form words, coming so hard that he saw spots.

He came back to reality with Draco's teeth scraping his jaw. "My turn," he said, and Harry nodded dazedly, running his fingers through a pool of his spilled come and fumbling to grip his prick.

"Yes, pet, you're so fucking good for me, now help me, yes—" Draco lost himself quickly as Harry coaxed him to finish—it took hardly anything at all, only a few bumps of Harry's fist down to the base of his prick, and slides back up to the head.

"Yes, yes, _yes, yes, yes—_ " Draco followed him on a string of increasingly breathy versions of _yes_ , keening into Harry's neck and making as he made an absolute mess of Harry's chest.

"Is all that for me?" Harry asked rhetorically, fascinated to watch as each fresh spurt of come squirted onto his skin, so much more than he was used to. Draco laughed the wonderful rumbly laugh that he must rarely share because Harry had never known him to have it before. Before this—before there was _them_. They slowed and then stopped moving altogether, sharing long minutes of heavy breathing in the near darkness, the air musty with the combined scent of their sweat and come mingling. It was Draco who rolled over at long last and summoned Harry's glasses.

"Can I borrow these?" he said, tapping Harry's chest with them.

"What for?" Harry asked dazedly. He waved his hand to clean them both up and then collapsed deeper into the mattress, wishing for sleep. His arse throbbed a little, and he felt the strange urge for Draco to stay for as long as Harry could still feel the aftereffects of their sex—to stay until Harry couldn't feel him anymore. To part now would leave him bereft. He didn't want to be without the one thing—one person—he wanted more than anything at that moment.

_But that could be hours—till morning, even—and you can't ask him for that. Don't be weird—don't make this weird. Don't be selfish._

Draco slipped the frames on and gave a little pose, and though they were slightly too wide for his narrow face, Harry couldn't help but think that he looked bloody hot in them.

"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies," was all he said. He removed them, padding away to the bathroom.

Harry scoffed. "What am I supposed to do without them?" No answer came. "I need to see regularly, Draco," he added, trying to sound as annoyed as he should be at the imposition.

"Wear your old pair for the week, I don't care," came Draco's reply. "You prefer them anyway."

He walked back in, clothed, the knot of his hair still messy, and gave Harry a peck on the lips that robbed him of further words. And then he crawled into the bed and lay on him.

Harry waited as Draco repositioned himself and finally stopped moving.

"What are you doing?" Harry spoke into his shoulder.

"Just shush, you," Draco replied, aligning them fingertip to fingertip, his cheek pressed against Harry's. "Close your eyes, and don't say anything for a minute."

He lay there as a human blanket, though too knobby in parts to be truly comfortable. Harry wasn't sure what was happening; if this was meant simply to distract him about the glasses, but his weight was a comfort, so he didn't say anything at all. He eventually pulled his hands free and placed them across Draco's back, and learned that this way, he could feel his heart beating from both sides of his ribs. Draco nestled his nose into the crook behind Harry's ear and breathed deeply, deflating on a long sigh. It was gentle and strange, and as his socked toes fiddled with Harry's, he wondered if this was what couples did, sometimes; if this was something Draco knew about and was teaching Harry.

After long minutes he squeezed Harry and then stood. It was like a hug, almost, and Harry's heart hammered harder, wondering what this was all about. He cracked an eye to look at him.

Draco opened his mouth as though to say something and then closed it. Before Harry could ask what was on his mind or say something dreadfully trite, like _Stay the night?_ and have to make up reasons why it didn't have to mean anything, Draco said, "Goodbye, pet," with a tight smile, and then he was out the door, gone into the quiet night.

* * *

**Thursday, October 23, 2003**

Harry's morning routine now started with a check of the Galleon for calls from Draco to respond to while he sipped his morning coffee. It also included a minute spared to cataloguing mysterious bruises. He steadfastly avoided looking in the mirror, even when it was foggy with condensation from the shower, but he checked for them while he dressed. Those with known provenances were the fingerprints and spots where Draco's bony joints accidentally collided with soft flesh.

Those that came home with him from the nights Draco didn't join him; those were generally mysteries, lost to a series of black holes in his memory. But the blackout bliss of uninterrupted sleep was called for, sometimes—was the only thing that kept him going when Draco wasn't there to fill the void. Like the night before—he remembered leaving the pub where he'd nipped in for dinner and a pint, and he remembered stumbling into the painting of Aunt Walburga because he definitely remembered the reaming out that Kreacher had given him for waking her at half-four in the morning. The in-between was lost forever.

It wasn't until he was over at Luna's place late Thursday night, half-cut off cheap Lambrusco with Parvati Patil, that he noticed a goose-egg at the back of his skull.

"Come _on_ , Harry," Parvati pulled him by the arm towards the rickety chair she'd set up in the centre of Luna's living room. "I'm fucking _ace_ at cutting hair. Just ask Luna—Luna! Aren't I ace at haircuts?"

Luna entered the room with a lit joint between her lips, eyes lidded and mischievous. "She's the best Harry; she's cut my hair for years. _And_ she trims Bernard's coat quarterly."

Harry let himself be pulled into the chair, trying his hardest to make sure that he didn't look constipated or spazzy as he silently tried to heal the tender spot on his head non-verbally whilst the two women _Accio'd_ shears and pomade and towels from all over the flat.

"Isn't Bernard that bear that Hagrid rescued? Are you comparing my hair to a bear's pelt?"

"Well," Parvati started, and she and Luna both gave him the same shrugging look, leading the three of them to burst out laughing, and as they did, Harry's fingers wandered through the back of his shaggy head, and he was thrilled to find the lump had disappeared.

The haircut was surprisingly good, the night light and full of easy conversation. Luna tried to lead them in a short stretching routine—"This is the routine I do with my lover," she said, totally seriously as she led them through a series of cat-to-cow poses, "really opens her hips"— that led to quite a bit of red wine spillage. Eventually, they all heaped onto her overstuffed couches, eating dried seaweed snacks and smoking the cheap American cigarettes Parvati had brought back with her from her last trip.

"You're getting well fucked these days," Luna said, poking Harry with her big toe.

Harry barely widened an eye at her. "And what makes you say that?" he asked.

"I can just tell," she answered. "When you're not getting any, you literally stand with your arse clenched so tightly you couldn't get a stick in or out of it."

Harry snorted. "That's such a bullshit answer," he said, but she only shrugged.

"You do not deny it, Potter, so do tell. Who's the lucky bloke?"

Harry swallowed, his training kicking in, even though the fog of drink and the second-hand effects of sitting in a hotboxed room with Luna Lovegood as long as he had left his senses dulled. He wiggled his fingers to unlatch the window, inviting in a refreshing, cold breeze of wet London air.

"Maybe I have started entertaining a fuck buddy," he said, Parvati's thrilled _"Oooooh,"_ making him laugh. He took a drag of the cigarette and coughed, banishing the stub before he kept trying and failing to smoke it properly.

"He's—it would never work for anything more. He's a Muggle, so, you know." He sighed, ignoring the patronizing look Parvati gave him.

_You know, what? You know—it would never work? We're from two different worlds? You wouldn't like him, or we're not a good fit, or it's bound to end soon anyway?_

"Poor thing. You're into him. What's his name?"

Harry wrinkled his nose, let his arm fall off the sofa to his fingertips grazed the carpet, covered in Gillyweed crumbs. Luna had fallen asleep, a soft snore punctuating the conversation. Harry smiled—he was safe here. His lies were taken at face value—he didn't need to protect himself overly much.

"Doesn't matter," he said, biting his lip. "What does matter is that he's fit and smart, and for whatever reason wants to shag me senseless every other day, and that's all he's asking for, and it's all I have to offer right now."

"Don't go selling yourself short, Potter," Parvati said. She pulled a pillow to her chest, staring up at the ceiling. "You never know these days. It's not so crazy, a wizard and a Muggle shacking up. It's been done before, and if the shoe fits..."

She turned to him then, hazel eyes puffy from the effects of the joint, her poofy hair a wreck, smashed up against the grotty crocheted couch pillows Luna had never thrown a cleaning charm at.

"Tell me, though. Is it good?"

Harry smiled. "It's marvellous." He swallowed, his heart aching all of a sudden, wanting to do Draco justice. Lying was so tiring after a while.

"He says the naughtiest things in the poshest voice," he blurted. "And he's kinky, and he's also very—he's very kind."

 _"Jesus_ , Potter—take this man and run." Harry shrugged, and Parvati shook her head, suddenly serious in the way that only the very inebriated could be.

"You've barely dated, so you don't know—blokes are rubbish." She threw her hand in a wide arc, as though she could encompass the city, the planet, in this statement. "Most blokes, they're not worth the breath of saying hello to them. This one sounds like a catch. Posh? Kinky? Kind? Fucking hell—I know we're friends and all, and this is terribly objectivizing, but the two of you, doing shit, randy as rabbits—sounds hot as balls to me."

"Parvati!" Harry yelled, waking Luna.

"I'm serious, mate," she waved a hand limply at him, "fuck me, what I wouldn't give to be a fly on that wall."

"What'd I miss?" Luna asked blearily, and Harry could only laugh.

* * *

**Friday, October 24, 2003**

Harry woke Friday morning with a subtly throbbing brain and a tingle in his throat, but in some ways, he'd never felt better.

He rubbed the crusts of sleep from his eyes and immediately checked the Galleon, his stomach dropping only a little that it held no invitation. He ran, showered, ate, and read the paper. Another new bruise to add to the collection in his mind, one that couldn't be attributed to the sex, but this one was barely a concern. He'd been hurt much worse before, and this was only his knee, swollen to the size of a grapefruit. He'd left Luna's and couldn't remember getting home, so he brushed it off as a tumble. Nothing major.

"Master is limping," Kreacher said when he entered the kitchen, and Harry thought he hid his surprise well, accepting his help to heal it properly.

 _See,_ Harry said to himself, _you barely even noticed that it hurt. Hardly counts._

Buttons slipped into buttonholes while he daydreamed about the meetings with Draco to come. A little time alone, the scratching of Tom's quill on parchment his only company as he waited for Victoria to finish up a call led to reminiscing about what he and Draco had done in nights previous and wondering what he'd say about Harry's haircut, and nerves turning his stomach at how he would react to Harry's request next they saw one another. He found himself smiling absently, thoughts that made him blush, crossing his mind over lunch, over dinner. It was like a veil had been pulled back, revealing the world in brighter colours, and overall he breathed a little easier each new day.

He wanted to reciprocate and call on Draco at the weekend but felt that something about it would read as desperate. The last time Harry had Ron and Hermione over for brunch, he'd barely been able to eat his eggs Benedict because of the dirty look Kreacher levelled at him when he insisted that yes, he was having two guests over and no, neither of them was _the young heir_. The sodding elf put out an extra place-setting.

"Is there someone new on the horizon we should know about?" Ron had asked, waggling his eyebrows. Harry couldn't help but blush beet-red, swearing vehement denials, barely able to choke down his meal at the thought of Kreacher outing him to his friends.

As far as Harry was concerned, the only turn for the worse of late was that he had no one to talk to about how Draco had somehow supplanted everyone else as the feature of his nightmares. He endured the unappealing first of watching Draco fall through the veil, and then, once he'd gotten back to sleep, it was to Draco bleeding, bleeding, bleeding, scrabbling over white tiles gone red. On a rare night in, one where he dozed off on the couch to the mumbling voices of the BBC on the wireless, he awoke from the image of Draco's pale hand struggling and failing to keep hold of Harry's, his screams as real as any Harry had heard while awake as he fell into a towering inferno, flesh peeling red to black as he burned.

It was an old dream, one he'd last had years ago. And here it was again, and Harry didn't bother leaving the house to find solace in a bottle that time, pouring a full mug of whisky and drinking that like it was water, sitting in the kitchen cellar because its freezing stone walls and the uneven floor kept him awake longer than any other place in the house. He shook quietly until the whisky took sight and smell and thought from him, and that was how and where he passed out when he couldn't stand the thought of watching Draco die another time.

Harry hadn't been over to his flat since the Quidditch match nearly a month previous. He felt as though to start calling on Draco would overexpose the weak spot in his heart, the foolish part of him that craved something more even as his brain railed against the concept. In Draco's coming over, Harry held a modicum of power. He couldn't give that up, at least not yet.

Because against all his better judgement, Harry started to crave it. Him. Draco.

He started to answer all of Draco's "So" with prepared ideas.

"So," Draco said late Friday night. They were sharing hot cocoa and biscuits in the lounge, his bare feet curled up underneath of him.

"So," Harry started, "I was thinking about the sofa."

Draco dipped a biscuit in his cocoa and took a demure bite, arched a brow Harry's way.

"What about it?"

"I was thinking about what we did last time on it," Harry swallowed, a finger trailing the rim of his mug, "and how I'd like to be on top this time, if that's alright."

Draco smiled to himself. He'd sat snuggly in Harry's lap, straddling him, bringing them both off together with the stroking of just his fist. Harry had to hold him by the back of his neck to keep him falling backwards off the couch, so lost he'd been in the moment.

"Of course." Draco discarded his dishes to the side and crawled over to nibble at Harry's ear, a surefire way to wrack his body with shivers. "Any other thoughts clanging about in that enormous head of yours?"

Harry pulled away from the touch, but weakly—he ached for it, even when it was too much.

"I thought that you could finger me," Harry said quietly, eyes smashed shut.

"Oh, I could," Draco said. Harry could hear the prowling smile in his tone. "I'll give you something to come around."

And he did. He really did, indeed.

They'd ended up in Harry's bed again because Draco said it was better that way, and it was after ages of kissing and the slow loss of clothing that he'd convinced Harry to lay on his stomach and had massaged his back and his arse and his thighs, down to the tips of his toes. He made Harry murmur the spells, and then he'd licked him again, eaten him out with a fierce sort of possession that made Harry's hips rise off the bed, chasing the feel of his mouth and the gift of his tongue, stabbing just inside of him.

And eventually, once he was slicked all over in oil and more than ready, once Draco was petting his hair and telling him how good he was, that the pad of the fingertip swirled around the edges dipped inside of him.

"Breathe," Draco reminded him, whispering it over and over, "breathe, pet—fuck, you're so hot, the inside of you is so hot—"

And even though it was only one finger because Harry tensed up at the slightest push of a second; and even though Harry blushed terribly, feeling deeply inadequate that he literally couldn't open his body up to this person who he felt heady with lust for; even then, Draco acted like fingering Harry was the hottest thing he'd ever seen or done, and Harry let himself believe, for a moment, that maybe it was.

Draco had angled them at long last so that Harry could suck his cock while he kept his middle finger pulsing inside of him, only stopping when he came, whining, down Harry's throat. He ducked down to return the favour, pushing Harry's hands out of the way, that finger held inside of him as though by a vice when he came too, desperate, panting, skin tingling all over as though electrified.

"You feel so good when you come," Draco said lazily. "The way you clench." Draco kissed his shoulder and held onto him briefly, a long parentheses for Harry to nestle into as the sweat cooled on their bodies, and Harry could tell that he was thinking of how Harry would feel around his cock, and for a moment, Harry was sure that he wanted that too. That he didn't have to fear that he'd do it wrong, or that he was a monster—a mistake—for wanting it. Imagined that it would go just like this; Draco taking care of him, Draco soothing him into it while working him into a frenzy, and for the first time, Harry could imagine clearly what it would feel like to take Draco inside of him without assuming it would be painful, or that he would be made to feel dirty—and that thought stole his breath away.

As of that rather spectacular fingering, Harry had officially been with Draco more times than he'd fooled around with all other men combined. He knew because he sat down and counted.

He resented his own cock, hard first thing the next morning. A reminder of what he couldn't have; of what had left only hours before. He went for a run, returning home slick from rain, and tried to distract himself from thoughts of sex with ideas for a costume to wear for Halloween. But that quickly turned to thoughts of what Draco would wear, what he _wished_ Draco would wear, and he ended up tossing off in the shower—too fast, coming hard as he moaned out Draco's name, two fingers slicked and pressed up inside him, not so hard when they were his own—and it was after that that he finally gave in and sent a call through the enchanted coin for a meeting early the next morning. It was a horny and, frankly, desperate move.

Draco rewarded him with chilly silence. Nothing, not a peep until he responded midday with a counter-offer, for that night. Harry left the disastrously boring charity lunch at Claridges (luckily also attended by Ginny) to respond, wanking in the loo like he was newly-pubescent. He felt unable to control himself, coming against a brick wall with a grunt and a feeling of utter disgust that he had to do _this, here_.

"You seem," Ginny said as they were served cold amaro and lemon as _digestifs_ , "different."

"Good different or bad different?" Harry asked. He had the distinct feeling that though all the blocks composed his being were solid, he was unravelling a bit—the glue holding him together not quite strong enough to keep bricks from slipping out of place. His thoughts had become overrun by Draco, his moods dictated by the duration of time that had elapsed since they'd seen one another. It was like he didn't know how to function properly outside their arrangement, doing all the other things as he'd always done them—on auto-pilot, only with slightly more gusto and on less sleep.

"Good different," Ginny remarked. "You seemed on edge earlier, but now you're more—relaxed."

"It's your banter," Harry winked at her, and she laughed, flicking her hand at him. "I'm not falling for that again, trust me," she said, but it held no malice, and Harry was simply glad that she, unlike Luna, didn't seem to have a sixth sense for whether or not he'd recently orgasmed.

Externally, he smiled. Internally, he cursed the day that Draco Malfoy had been born.

That same night, as soon as Draco exited the Floo and retrieved his order of a virgin cucumber Tom Collins from Kreacher, he turned to Harry.

"A reminder seems to be in order," he said. He stopped to take a sip of his drink while Harry crossed his arms and waited. He was shirtless, the better to get what he wanted.

 _Although, really,_ he realized, _you're just giving him what he wants by dressing this way._ He cursed himself doubly.

"While it might be early for some—some being you, in this instance—I'm at work for eight and out for a run and shower before. Every weekday." His mouth formed a pinched line, his tone was stern, sterner even than how it got when he stepped into the role of master, the foil to Harry's role of adoring pet.

"I asked you about this morning. It's Saturday," Harry said. Draco rolled his eyes.

"I was _busy_ this morning. And I still have to have breakfast, which, may I remind you," he crooked a finger to point at Harry, "I don't have an elf to cook for me."

"Well, hello to you too," Harry said. Before Draco could come back at him with a cutting remark, he continued, "Okay, so morning-time didn't work for you today. But another day, it must."

"You're not hearing my _no_ , Potter," Draco huffed, truly annoyed. He got a little line between his brows when something really vexed him, and there it sat between them now. "Five is when I'm lacing up to head out."

"Well then, that's when I'm asking if I can join you."

Draco squinted at him. "Are you becoming confused? Have I missed the signs where you turned deranged?" He ran a demonstrative hand over his own chest. "The mornings are my time. It's not," he waved his hand dismissively towards Harry, "this."

"What's _this_ , Draco?"

His eyes narrowed. "Don't play with me. You know full well what this is. I need my runs. It's—psychological."

"That's fine," Harry said. He leaned against the worn leather chaise-longue behind him and crossed his arms, knowing full well that the pose made his biceps swell the way Draco liked. He watched, thrilled as Draco's pupils dilated, and he ran the tip of his pink tongue along his bottom lip.

"And I don't do outdoor sex," Draco added. "The thrill of getting caught by the Muggle police doesn't do it for me."

"I'll join you on the run, so I can join you for the shower after. You're the one who got me started on them."

"I didn't invite you along," Draco volleyed back. Harry sighed, irritation showing through.

"I miss you—" at these words, Draco's eyes sharply met Harry's. Harry cleared his throat, shook his head to clear his fringe from where it fell across the tops of his old wire-framed glasses; Draco yet to return his new pair.

"I mean, I miss this in the morning." He licked his lips, wishing that the look of shock would fade from Draco's face.

_He fucking hated that. Stupid, stupid—_

"I just wake up so fucking hard, and if I hold off, I'm edgy all day."

"Ah," Draco said. He went quiet, strange for him, his face a study in restraint. Whatever the thoughts, it was better than the look of alarm he'd given before.

"So what do you say? Let me join you tomorrow." Harry was starting to feel embarrassed by the ask. It was more than sex, but only marginally. But what if even _this_ was too much for Draco?

He stepped forwards to close the distance between them, hands sliding around Draco's hips to clasp around his lower back.

"You could come back here afterwards, and I'll show you how the house redid the bathroom on the second floor. It's quite nice."

"No," Draco said. He looked tired, even through the Glamour he'd applied. Up close, Harry could see where it slipped a little around his eyes. He wondered how work was going for him and how those visits with Narcissa went. Whether Lucius continued to haunt their table, and who else was infringing on Draco's time.

_Off-limits, off-limits, off-limits, off-limits. You're pushing, and he's going to leave you like he already should have left. Stop making a fool of yourself—_

"I'll do you a full brekkie," Harry said in his best sing-song voice. "Please," he tried when Draco appeared unmoved, giving what he knew to be fairly irresistible puppy-dog eyes. They'd gotten him out of more than one tight spot while in training, whether it was for being late or accidentally setting a piece of equipment on fire.

Draco paused, drink halfway to his lips. He swallowed hard and put it down.

"That was truly astonishing to see. You're begging for it; you do know that, right?"

Harry scoffed, though his cheeks flared with an embarrassed burn. "And? I'll beg for a lot more if it means we get to fuck first thing in the morning."

"We," Draco said. He raised a brow and made a humming sound, and Harry's heart was ready to beat right up his throat and out of his mouth.

"The answer's still no, pet," Draco spoke into his lips, not bothering to kiss him as he tugged down at Harry's joggers without any preamble. "Too dangerous. Until you have a game plan for how you, being you, and me, being me, simply trot about London with nary a photo being taken, the answer will remain no. What we do, we do in secret."

Harry could think of a half-dozen ways they could, but they all hinged on Draco _wanting_ to. To spend time with him.

_And he doesn't care, and he won't, and you should have fucking known that off the top already._

Draco took to his knees and tugged Harry's pants down in a series of quick tugs.

"Now be a good pet and lock the Floo," he said. Harry's cock bobbed out, half-stiff already, and Draco clucked, as though he were put off by it, though this was his ruse. He was perpetually annoyed with Harry's cock, the same cock he paused while mouthing it to admonish it for being _thick_ and _beautiful_ and _perfect_.

Harry wished that he wasn't hard, that he could keep it down and have a conversation with Draco. It was the first time they'd been together that he wished didn't hinge on the sex, which was always good, always surprising, _fantastic_. But right then, he wanted to pull Draco up and spill everything. The dreams—nightmares, really. The feeling he got when he thought about having sex with him and how it felt like maybe it meant something to him too, the way his face went soft when they were done. Harry wanted to replay all the moments he'd shut his mouth and say, _Tell me what you were going to say_. He wanted to ask why he was tired, and if he would stay the night, and a million other things.

But why this seemed important was quickly lost to him as Draco licked a firm stripe along the underside of his shaft and looked up at Harry, wide-eyed and so very far from innocent.

"You're my fuck-buddy, not my running mate," Draco said. He tapped the head of Harry's cock over and over against his tongue for emphasis, and Harry hissed at how sensitive, how fucking incredibly hot that was. His insides twisted with emotions, but he could shut those down and lose himself in this moment a thousand times over. The sight of his cockhead in Draco's mouth was the ultimate distraction—it made him lose all thought; all his wants narrowed down to the one to paint Draco's lips with his spunk.

"Take me for what I am. You can show me to the shower tonight while I'm coming down your throat." He flicked his tongue into the slit, and Harry's eyes rolled back and closed, and they both knew who had won that conversation. "I could use a proper scrub, after the day I had."

Draco didn't finish the thought, and Harry didn't ask as he started to give him the kind of head he used to only dream of. With Draco, it seemed, there was sex, and there was breakfast. Apparently, it was going to take a lot more than Harry's foolproof puppy-dog eyes to convince him that the twain should ever meet.

* * *

**Notes:** Oof! Glad to get this out on time. This was originally part of a massive chapter, which has now become two chapters, which is to say that I've really just delayed in the inevitable and will have to do quite a bit more writing and editing next week.

That being said: next week's chapter might bring us to Halloween in the story in alignment with Halloween in real life, and wouldn't that be fun?

Many thanks to the commenters: you make my week, every week! I love to read them, and for the kudos that let me know you were here :)

Next chap up by **Saturday, October 31, 2020.**

xx


	10. Delicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pre-sale, an after party, pesto, and peas.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Childhood abuse

* * *

**Sunday, October 26, 2003**

"Mate! Harry! It's us. Get us in!"

Harry caught the eye of the wizard guarding the backroom of Flourish & Blotts and waved, signalling for him to bring down the cordon and allow his friends through. The backroom was unglamorous and cramped on a good day, and between the harried employees of the shop, barrel-chested security, and Harry and his personal staff, space was stretched to its limit. Nonetheless, he was glad to see his friends beaming faces as they squeezed in, shuffling around each other on the scuffed linoleum floors to share awkward hello's.

"Thanks for coming, everyone. I'm sorry it's so mad," Harry said, giving Hermione a one-armed hug as she tried to keep her bun from bumping into the shelves of books behind her.

"That's alright, Harry, it's exciting! Also, I have news for you from the accountant for S.P.E.W. It looks like we're only a signature away from the trust being set up in your name—"

"Mione, you know I don't want that," Harry sighed, colouring at the thought of having one more thing with his name on it out in the world. He'd been working with her to set up an account at Gringott's for Kreacher with regular payments directly deposited into it. She'd penned an op-ed encouraging all those who still had house-elves in their service to do the same if clothes weren't an option (Kreacher had threatened to drown himself in Harry's used bathwater should he be given clothes; Harry had relented but promised to bring it up every year, just in case). Harry had also pledged a third of the Potter fortune to the cause, setting up a trust to provide transition funding for house-elves who wished to leave their lives of indentured service. Ron told Harry that when her article was accepted by the Prophet, she'd actually cried.

"Well, we can talk about it later," she patted his hand, ecstatic smile not leaving her face. "I've never seen a bookshop this full! It's a wonder anyone can find what they're looking for if it isn't a pre-order for your book."

Ron rolled his eyes, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he tried to flatten himself against a back wall. "That's kind of the point, Mione. It's a _pre-sale_.” He emphasized his newly-learned Muggle word.

"I know that _Ronald_ , I was only saying—"

Harry stopped listening as the two began to bicker, offering an apologetic smile to the assembled crew. Luna was there, resplendent in a matching lilac crocheted pantsuit. Neville and Ginny were engrossed in a poster plastered on the wall that looked about a century old, and it was as Ron shifted, Harry noticed another head in the crowd.

"Justin," he said, surprise evident in his voice. "Er, good to see you. Are you joining us for afters?"

"Yeah," Ron answered for Justin Finch-Fletchley, clapping a hand on his shoulder and shaking him. "Ran into him on the way, figured it would be a good catch up. You ready to head out, Harry?"

Harry looked over to Victoria for permission to leave. She was deep in conversation with Tom and the shop manager, the three of them squinting over a parchment piece as long as her arm. She could feel his gaze and flicked a hand in his direction.

"Go, be gone with you, you're done for the day. Oh, but do find those glasses of yours, won't you?" She frowned at him—she and Reza had been on a dual campaign to rid him of his favoured round wire-frames for years, and they weren't taking the comeback well. "Reza made me promise to get you to wear them for the Hogwarts ball. He hates you in those old things."

"Sure he did," Harry pulled a face, knowing his impudence wouldn't get him in toomuch trouble with her. "Will do. Thanks, both," he added, which was enough to have Tom beaming at him.

Harry dragged a hand through his hair, trying to pretend he didn't notice how besotted Tom was. Ginny knew the score—she was going scarlet from keeping her laughter down.

"If you lot are okay to Apparate there, we can go straight on from here. Anyone have the coordinates I can—"

"I've got you, Harry," Justin interrupted him with a wide smile. "I'll give you a side-along, not a problem at all."

“Uh, er, alright. Well then, I'll see you all in a minute."

"See you," Hermione said, giving him a parting peck on his cheek. Her eyes flicked in the nervous way of hers, and then over to Justin.

"Hermione," Harry growled under her breath, but she just shrugged and Apparated away as it hit him then that Justin's being there wasn't chance at all. Harry cursed her internally, wishing her bad breath and terrible hair for a year.

The rest of the group disappeared with sharp _pops_ until it was just Harry and Justin left, employees scurrying past them, studiously pretending not to stare. Justin closed the distance, standing close enough that Harry could smell him—fancy aftershave, musky, actually kind of delicious—and offered his arm, smiling all the way.

"Good to see you, Harry. It's been a minute, hasn't it?"

"Er, yeah. Same to you, Justin. I assume it's difficult to get away from Hogwarts during the term."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all when the trip is worth it. Ready?" His eyes were the colour of bubble-gum ice cream—a searing, artificial blue. Harry noticed because they seemed determined to hold his gaze for longer than was necessary.

 _Because_ , Harry realized, _he's flirting with you. You're being flirted with._

"You're going to love this place," Justin gushed. "My cousin Charles runs it; well, he's the landlord really, but, you'll see. Great to see you, Harry. You're looking really well. I have about a thousand questions about what a day in the life is like for you lately. It's honestly been too long—have I invited you to my uncle's club yet?"

Harry took the proffered arm, hoping for the sake of propriety that his smile didn't look like a grimace.

"Uh, no, but you can tell me all about it. Just—could you get me out of here?"

"Your wish is my command," Justin said, and they were off.

* * *

"This is a setup," Harry hissed at Ron as he shoved him into an empty booth off the end of the bar. The bartender on duty was especially keen to chat up the gaggle of witches ordering mulled wine down the end of the counter, and it was apparent that he and Ron weren't about to be served anytime soon unless they suddenly grew breasts and lascivious smiles.

"Harry, friend, what makes you say—"

"What makes you think that I need to be set up with someone?"

"Mate, come on. How many times do you want to be Witch Weekly's Most Eligible Bachelor, eh? You do want to date, right?"

Harry scoffed. "Sure, I want to date."

"Alright, and to date, one must see people. And talk to them. That's all this is!"

"He's not just any people, though," Harry said, annoyed. "We know Justin, and he's fine to have round for a bit of chat but—date? Him? Normally his prey's parents have to be landed fucking gentry for him to give them a second glance."

Ron started to speak, flustered, but Harry was too annoyed to let him defend himself just yet.

"You know what I think? I'd bet a hundred Galleons he's the first gay person our age you two thought of when you decided I suddenly wasn't allowed to be single anymore."

Ron clucked. "Not true. Malfoy was the first we thought of, and you don't see us trying to set you up with him, now do you?"

"That's—what, that's—" Harry blustered. His insides went taut. "That's not the point! And Malfoy's, he's actually okay, you know? Well, you wouldn't know, but I've run into him a few times and—"

"What's this about, Malfoy?" Ron said, brows immediately furrowed. "He skulking about, making weird apologies still? I heard he's a right ingratiating little twat at work.”

"Who'd you hear that from?" Harry asked, palms immediately sweating.

_Change the FUCKING subject, abort, abort._

He could hardly believe that they were having such a prolonged discussion about the one person he could never broach in conversation with his friends.

"Mione was saying something the other day about how he's been helping out with her department on, um," Ron scratched at his chin, squinting at the group playing enchanted darts in the corner. "Well, to be honest, I can't remember what about, it was dead boring. What's this you were saying about running into him again?"

"Er, at that Cannons game last month," Harry said, feeling abruptly very hot, as though a thousand stage lights were suddenly aimed directly at him. He was glad that Ron already had a few pints under his belt, as his eyes and ears had become much more astute since they'd gone through Auror training.

"I saw him, and it wasn't terrible, that's all. We spoke."

"You know you should avoid him if you can," Ron said. He pinned Harry with a stare and then shook it off. "Nothing good comes of you and Malfoy spending time together; that much I know is true.”

Harry was proud that his traitorous tongue hadn’t let loose his secret so far but couldn’t trust himself much further. A change of topic was called for.

"Ron, you're my best friend, and the point I'm trying to make is that I'm doing fine on my own."

Ron's facial expression flickered through a handful of emotions, one of them readily recognizable as disbelief.

"Really! I've been fixing up the house, working my arse off over this book, but it's good, you know, me keeping busy." Harry rubbed at his forearms, memories of nights spent throwing words out and having Draco answer immediately with the perfect synonym coming to mind. Bollocks. "So what that I don't have time to date right now?"

"Working hard has never really been the problem for you, though, mate, has it?"

Harry frowned at Ron, who wouldn't meet his eye. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." Ron chewed the inside of his lip. "Only that you throw yourself into the middle of things without a lot of looking both ways."

"I've had to," Harry said, instantly defensive. Ron smiled, looked at him with kind eyes, and Harry could feel some of the tension go out from his shoulders.

"I know. I'm not saying that it's your fault or anything. You're kind of oblivious to when what you're doing is harming you. Don't get me wrong; we're glad for you. You seem to be doing well lately. You're great to be around these days, a lot more than—" Ron stopped himself mid-sentence, looking a bit shocked. Harry could tell that if Hermione were around, she'd have slapped him on the shoulder by now and hissed at him to _shut up_.

"Okay, what does _that_ mean?"

Ron smacked his lips, looking around Harry back at the bar for a distraction. None came to save him. He winced, pale, freckled face crinkling in a moue of pain.

"Forget I said anything. Let's not dwell on that. The point is, this is a friendly gathering. Nothing more. Can you blame your friends for trying?"

Harry let his shoulders sag a little further, rolling them back to release the tension they held, cracking his neck.

"That's all fine, but Justin is just so," Harry dared a peek around the edge of the booth to look over to where Justin stood with the group. He cradled his beer, laughing along to something Luna had said, sandy-blonde curls shaking around his head, looking right at home with them all.

Harry turned back to Ron and grimaced.

"What?" Ron dropped his jaw, exasperated. "Come on, mate. He's so what? What's it hurt talking to him? He's half the arse now he was back in school."

Harry sighed. Justin was well-dressed, a little taller than him, broad-shouldered. The wind-bitten rouge of his cheeks from time spent playing sport brought him pretty close to Harry's usual type. He was polite enough to Harry's most intimate friends that if Harry had any interest in him at all, they'd be a comfortable fit.

But Justin didn't do a thing for him. They'd touched, and there were no sparks. His laugh didn't make Harry smile. He'd probably snicker at the concept of calling Harry by a pet name, especially one as docile as _pet_. Justin was a social climber looking to latch onto fame and fortune; he was only marginally better than the average person at hiding those intentions.

Harry couldn't dream of saying these things to Ron, so instead, he said, "He's so, like," he screwed his face up, trying not to say anything terrible that would come back to haunt him, "like—middle-manager at Gringotts."

"What, he's too boring for you? I thought you liked boring. You don't go for adventurous shit anymore."

"It's not that, it's—We don't have anything to talk about." Harry winced, recalling Justin's mute participation when their conversation took a turn to the maudlin after Neville joked about not being a fan of snakes. "He wasn't here for most of the war."

"Sure you do," Ron frowned at his empty drink and grabbed Harry by the arm to drag him back to the bar. "Here, help me get a fucking round and bring these over and stop your scowling." He leaned over the bar, yelling, "Oi! Harry Potter down here, and he's mighty thirsty," which had the beneficial effect of getting the bartender to look at them and walk over, and the negative of every other set of eyes within 50 paces doing the same.

"You can be such a prick," Harry said, a flush burning the back of his neck. Ron only grinned, giving their order and ignoring the waves of mutiny rolling off Harry in his direction.

"Haz, you know I love you. And Hermione, she loves you. So for the love of god, just give it half a go, and then you can say you tried, and it'll buy you a month or two before she tries again. It was Hermione's idea anyway, and I think _he_ twisted _her_ arm about it, to begin with, so if you're going to chew anyone's head off about it, it should be hers."

"Maybe I will," Harry grumbled, levitating half the mugs over to their table. Justin held Harry's eyes as they toasted one another and settled back into their spots.

"What's the news since we left?” Harry asked.

"We were just talking about what Justin got up to after seventh year," Neville said. He had an arm loosely around Ginny's shoulder, the two of them sharing a bench seat opposite Harry. Harry took a sip and regarded them, casually close and obviously happy, and realized that he hardly cared. The usual biting anger just wasn't there.

"Did you get a chance to finish up at another school?" Harry asked. Justin shook his head no, standing at the head of the table, still not just pulling up a chair.

_Like a wanker._

"No, I finished at Eton seventh year and did my magical studies by correspondence. Bit silly, but it helped in the long run. I'm teaching Muggle studies now, over at Hogwarts. Youngest on faculty—well, it can be a bit of a bore."

"I'm aware. I'm on the board," Harry smiled through gritted teeth as his friends made appreciative sounds. Harry turned to stare at Hermione, hoping that he was appropriately telegraphing _Justin is such a git_ with his facial expression, while she pretended not to notice.

"We went to America for the year after, to get away from it all. I stayed for a bit, then travelled..."

Harry wasn't sure where Justin travelled to, but he did a good job pretending to care, even as the white-blond hair he knew so well sailed across his sightline. His pulse raced as he watched Draco in his peripheral vision as he ordered and sat at the far end of the room, facing away from their party.

"Harry? Harry?"

"Oh, sorry," Harry snapped around to face Ginny, pulled from his reverie of watching Draco arrange his luncheon.

"Ron was asking if you were looking to travel this year? I don't think any of us stand a snitch's chance on a sunny day to catching up to all the places Justin's already been. What was it—sixty countries?" she asked, very seriously.

"Seventy," he corrected.

Ginny nodded sagely. "Well, it'll be tough to top that, but we've got to start now if we're going to try."

Her lips twitched as she spoke. She shared a look with Harry as they took overly large sips of their drinks to keep from laughing, Ginny barely hiding her grin as she straightened up and threw her long Dutch braids over her shoulders. She was taking the piss out of Justin, and Harry appreciated every snarky moment of it.

He tapped the tabletop at a loss with how to contribute to the conversation.

"Er, I don't know. Once this book is out, it'll be January before I'm free from obligations. It's such madness right now; I hardly have time to think."

"Well, where would you go if you could?" Hermione asked. "I'm dreaming of getting away to Madrid this summer."

"Only if you promise to stop slathering me in that Muggle suncream every day. That stuff's a bloody nuisance, is what it is."

"Ron, you burn through charms," Hermione sighed. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Oh!" Luna suddenly perked up, "I'm visiting the east coast of Mexico. There's a coven of _brujas_ there I'm joining for a sex ritual at the vernal equinox."

"Fuck yes, Luna, _that's_ the kind of travel we're talking about," Ginny and Luna cheers'd one another as Neville blushed a deep red. "Travelling for sex rituals, now _that's_ living. All Nev and I have planned is Wales with his Gran this Christmas."

"What's wrong with that?" Neville asked, pulling back. He'd started growing a beard, and Harry was reminded to tell him that it was a good look when he had the chance to later. It suited him and, combined with his thick woollen sweaters, gave him the hearty, hipster-lumberjack look. He seemed right at home in the bar, with its decorative axes and tartan accents and faux-Troll paraphernalia littering the walls.

"Nothing's the matter with it, Nev; I never said there was. Your Gran's lovely. All I'm saying is, I get the wanderlust.” Ginny went starry-eyed and sighed. "I’d love to plan for another trip somewhere far off, you know? Get it in while we're young."

"Alaska," said Harry, at last. "Or France. Australia. Madagascar? I don't know; they're all new to me." Harry played with the condensation on his glass, fingers leaving blank trails between the water spots. "I mean, I've never taken a vacation, now that I think about it."

"Not even as a kid?" Neville asked. Harry pursed his lips and thought about it, shaking his head.

"No. I was, um. Not brought along, no."

There was a silence that followed this, which sometimes happened when Harry opened his mouth and said something that to him was normal but operated to remind everyone else how unlike them he was. His insides squirmed, and then something hot heated at his thigh.

The Galleon in his pocket burned as if it had recently soaked in a pot of boiling water. When he looked up, Draco was looking squarely at him, his face a blank slate. He looked away immediately as Harry gulped.

"That's not right. You work too hard, Harry. Everyone deserves a break now and again," Justin nudged at Harry's shoulder. He hated it when people did that, touched him without asking, but he shrugged it off.

"Yeah, well. January's my big chance to get away." Harry drained his beer, wishing that he could get away immediately to see the time inscribed on the coin. What if it was for right now, right this second?

"Noted," Justin said, "I'll ask around for where is good that time of year. South American is terribly overdone, but perhaps something a little less obvious, like New Zealand." Harry nodded, a light, fake smile in place, and it was definitely happening now. This was flirting. Harry recognized it because he'd failed so spectacularly at noticing with Draco before.

When Harry looked up, it was as though by thinking Draco's name, he'd willed him into being. He stood next to Justin, his arms loosely crossed, radiating a relaxation he couldn’t possibly feel.

"Hullo," Draco said, angling himself to look at each person in turn as he said it. He didn’t spare Harry even half a second more than anyone else. "I couldn't help but notice your little gathering over here, and I thought I should—"

"Come along and ruin it?" Justin asked, voice flat.

Draco blinked slowly, turned to him. "No, Justin. I thought I'd politely say hello. Which is what I was doing just now. You weren't nearly so irritable last I saw you out and about."

Justin fake-coughed into his arm, looking caught out.

"Yes, well. I do try to maintain some decorum when I'm out having a night with the lads." There was a dark edge to Justin's tone, and he flicked a look over to Harry for a moment.

 _Odd,_ Harry thought. _No poker face on that one._

"Oh no, not at Persephone's, silly." Draco's faux-lightness was a treat to see, now that Harry found his silken tongue and icy delivery to be turn-ons. He touched Justin's arm lightly, and _that_ did something to Harry, possessiveness spiking deep in his belly.

"I was talking about when we used to go to Night Rider, back in—oh goodness, let's not age ourselves by admitting when. When you left my flat the next morning, you were perfectly polite, but maybe your memory is a bit foggy. Overuse of Euphoria Elixir will do that."

"You're one to talk," Justin ground out.

"Nonetheless," Draco turned back to the table in time for Ginny to spray her last sip of beer into her hand, providing ample distraction for Neville to conjure her a napkin to sop it up and for Luna to descend into a giggling fit.

"Granger, Potter, Lovegood, good to see you."

Hermione gave him a genuine smile, studiously ignoring Ron's glare. "Hi, Malfoy. How are you keeping?"

"Exhausted, but alive. Wong's got us trying this new Muggle system for development called _sprints_. It's about as delightful as it sounds."

They shared a smile at some inside, work-related joke, and Harry felt about ready to have to scrape his jaw off of the floor. He chanced a look from Hermione's face to those of the people Draco hadn't yet greeted and saw that their faces were decidedly stony.

"Weasley's, Longbottom," Draco said, turning to them, "I owe you each an apology, but now isn't the time or place for that. I don't mean to ruin your afternoon."

"Bit late for that," Neville said, gripping his pint glass so hard that Harry was afraid it might implode.

Draco gave a weak smile.

"Trust me; if I couldn't exist sometimes, I wouldn't. But I'm here, and now that I’ve given my greetings, I’ll be on my way. See you at work, Granger," he said, turning on his heel to leave.

"Malfoy, wait," Harry found himself standing before he knew what he was doing, "my, er, publicist is asking about those glasses. Any chance you have them on you?"

Draco's face contracted with a slight frown. "You want them now?"

"Yeah, before I forget. I'm putting in an order anyway. I'll come with you. Anyone want anything?"

A mix of slack-jawed and concerned faces looked back at Harry, Justin's included. Ron held himself low to the table, as though he could only comprehend what was happening by getting a good look at the situation from a lower angle.

"Why...does Malfoy...have your glasses, Harry?" Neville spoke in slow-motion, the effort of thinking through the possible answers to the question causing him pain even to contemplate.

Draco tossed his head to flick hair from his eyes, casual as could be.

"Potter here returned a pair of mine this summer when I misplaced them. I'm trying an experimental potion on his to see if it solves a problem. Tired eyes. Absolutely _titillating_ stuff, I can assure you."

“Because... you are..." Neville pressed on.

Draco starting speaking at the same time Harry did.

"We're putting the past behind us—" started Draco.

"Not, um, enemies anymore—" said Harry.

Draco scoffed and gave him an aggrieved look that Harry understood in no uncertain terms meant for him to _shut up_.

"I'm doing my best to make amends, Longbottom. Giving back what I can to society. Sometimes, that's paying back small debts." He turned on Harry, poking him in the chest. "You don't tell your friends anything, do you?" he asked, exasperation tinging his tone. "You're honestly useless—come fetch your glasses so I can be done with you for the day. Bye, Gryffindors, and Luna. See you, Justin," he finished, lacing the name with more venom than Harry had heard from him in months.

Harry followed him to his table, acutely aware of the eyes staring holes into his back all the way.

"Couldn't have mentioned me once even as a cover story, hmm?" Draco said quietly as he rummaged to recover Harry's glasses, passing them to him in a velveteen bag.

"Couldn't have avoided the whole awkward situation by not coming over to the table, hmm?" Harry retorted.

Draco rolled his eyes and took his seat, smoothing the pleats in his trousers over his thighs.

"What did you take these for in the first place?" Harry asked, pulling the glasses out to inspect them and putting his old pair away.

"Cover story," Draco responded, his tone implying Harry's idiocy. He sniffed, "and they're a poor fit. You're forever pinching the bridge of your nose, mentioning headaches. I figured it would never occur to you to have them adjusted. I've added a cushioning charm around the temples, and there's a potion I wanted to try out coating the arms."

Harry swapped them out for his old pair and was astonished at the immediate difference.

"They're so light. It—wow."

"And?" Draco opened his napkin across his lap, not looking at Harry.

"And they, um, smell nice? Is that peppermint?"

Draco's eyes flicked up to meet Harry's. He beamed. "It is. It's a long-lasting potion. Slow-release of lavender and peppermint. Just a touch."

"For the headaches," Harry supplied.

Draco raised an eyebrow, sipped his tea. Crumbs were left on his plate—he'd already finished whatever his meal had been.

"Obviously," he said, every bit the haughty teen Harry remembered from school. But that was cover in itself, the arrogance. This was a gift any way one considered it, and a thoughtful one at that.

"That's nice of you," Harry was acutely aware that he was pushing the limit of how long he could feasibly talk to Draco without a friend coming over to check on him. Or eavesdrop.

Because they were in the middle of a bar on a Sunday afternoon, and everyone and their dog knew who he was.

"You didn't have to do that."

"It's nothing. I prefer you in these."

Harry's lips wobbled, and he raised his own eyebrow, leading Draco's face to fall. "Stop, that was not a compliment, you dolt," he hissed. "I—You're less of a twat when you're not squinting through a migraine." Harry stopped fiddling with them and watched Draco flush, pink right across his cheeks.

"If this was a cover, why'd you come over to the table then?" Harry asked.

"I wanted to say that we've fucked before, Justin and I."

"I gathered," Harry said, pretending apathy.

Draco always managed to squeeze in a few words that stung when Harry got to feeling the warm and fuzzies. It was like he noticed and had the instinctive urge to quash the feelings before they took root. It had to be purposeful, the way Draco was so cold saying it.

_Is he trying to rub it in?_

"He wants you. The way he's slobbering over you over there, it's disgusting."

"And? Is this going somewhere?"

He didn't like Justin's progressions towards him any more than Draco seemed to, but he didn't want to let that on to Draco now. Both men were conventionally attractive and similar in broad strokes; Harry could see that easily. Posh, blond, embedded in the wizarding culture. They were even dressed similarly, though where Justin looked stuffy, Draco appeared tailored, sharp.

Draco licked his lips, eyes flashing over to the group and then back to Harry's.

"I can tell he wants you," he repeated, voice barely above a whisper, "but I know how you like it." He began to pack his things to leave. "Check your coin when you get the chance."

"I'll be free," Harry said. Draco's eyebrows rose in surprise, but he said nothing more. Harry sidled back up to the bar and was served immediately, the pressure of so many watching him do so leading him to over order—one of everything on the menu, for the table—and Draco performed admirably, side-stepping around him as he left without a backwards glance.

The afternoon passed in a blur for Harry. The tension of Draco's visit passed, with Justin asking if he was alright, which infuriated Harry in concept, because of _course_ he was _alright_ , though he bit his tongue. He had only to endure a few minutes of awkward conversation from those who said they'd never get over seeing him in public, and the surprising voices in his favour at the table—surprising to Harry that they were Luna's and Hermione's. Apparently, Draco had a correspondence with Luna established over a shared interest in lunar cycles and their effects on potions ingredients and spell-casting.

"He's my cousin, too," she said airily, "so I see him from time to time. My mother always said it was important to keep family close."

"We're all cousins," Ron grumbled, "what's your excuse, Hermione?"

"He comes to meetings well-prepared and bearing decent peace offerings," she said, "and by that, I mean piping hot cappuccinos from my favourite shop five blocks over. Rain or sleet or wind, he's always got one for me."

 _"Bribes,_ Hermione," Ron bellowed, "those are bribes he's making!"

"Listen, Ron; you know how terrible the canteen coffee is. Don't you dare try and take this away from me," she said sternly. "If Malfoy wants to buy himself into my good graces with bribes and taking the minutes of interdepartmental briefings, I say, let him."

"I'm sorry, but I just don't get it," Justin said. "Sure, I've gotten drunk with him before, when I was younger and considerably less savvy, but he's not _good people_ , you know?"

Harry sipped his drink, unable to stomach more than a bite of the beautiful piles of food before them. His worst fears about how people really felt about Draco were coming true all around him.

 _If this is how your friends think, imagine the papers. Imagine it getting out, and the scandal, and how he'll be dragged through the mud, fair or not_.

"I think his apology to me was sincere," Hermione said with finality. Harry gave her as reassuring a smile as he could. "I'm not saying everyone has to forgive him," at this, she flicked a look over to Neville, who steadfastly stared at the feast that had appeared before them. "It's just that I can see that he's working hard to change, and that's enough for me."

The subject was changed to Halloween party planning, an excellent, neutral topic, and Harry was asked for one photograph with a young witch, which quickly turned to autographs until Ron stepped in and Harry was tucked at the back of the table where passersby couldn't tap his shoulder and do the little wave thing that signalled an incoming ask. Nervous energy drove him to drink another pint and then another. He couldn't stop his leg from jiggling under the table, the promise of the coin in his pocket making every minute feel like an hour.

He checked the Galleon when he finally visited the loo for a piss. The time on it was something new, the roman numerals parsing out to 19:00. Early evening meant that they could go at it for hours.

Maybe it was Draco asking for more than late-night fucks. Staking a claim in Harry's time, time that couldn't be filled with Justin, or nameless others.

It was possessive. It was almost a date.

Almost.

* * *

Harry sensed more than heard Draco's arrival that evening. It was like the mood of the house suddenly swung upwards. Using kitchen towels as makeshift potholders, he walked gingerly up from the kitchen proper and into the dining area.

Kreacher was already at Draco's side, one white-clothed arm held aloft, on which Draco deposited his long, camel-coloured coat and gloves. He turned to Harry with a frown.

"What on earth are you doing?" he asked. Kreacher disappeared with a _pop_ , and Draco strode through the place he had occupied, balancing on his fingertips as he craned to see what was in the pot Harry laid down.

"It's food, Draco. Edible food that I cooked myself, even."

"But why do you insist on carrying it when you could so obviously burn yourself?"

"I like cooking the Muggle way. I don't think hot sauces and knives and levitation charms should mix."

"Hmm," was all Draco replied. His demeanour remained spiky, and he didn't move to sit.

"Are you hungry?" Harry asked, concern bubbling up inside him. He'd purposefully ignored the possibility of this kind of awkward reception from Draco, but now that it was happening, the feeling returned full-force.

"I ate late," Draco frowned. "You didn't have to do this."

"It's only pasta, relax." He scratched nervously at the back of his neck, noticing as Draco eyed the slip of stomach revealed as his shirt bunched up. The slag. "I would have made it for myself if you weren't coming over. You can join me, or you can talk while I eat because I'm starved. So do you want a plate or not?"

Draco waited a long moment and then nodded, taking his seat slowly, as though it were a danger to do so. Harry found himself releasing a deep breath as he summoned two plates, the silverware and napkins trailing them to the table. Draco sat at the table's head, so Harry took the seat to his right, with a full view of the fireplace behind him. Harry was grateful to have something to look at other than Draco, who, though he couldn't put his finger on what was different from any other night, looked absolutely stunning.

"So, what are we having?” Draco drawled, haughty as all get out. It made Harry’s insides squeeze. “Please tell me you're not, like, secretly a Michelin starred chef or something—I'll have to kill myself.”

"You'll live another day, it seems.” Harry grabbed Draco's plate to ladle a portion onto first. “Gnocchi and peas, with pesto chicken."

To this, Draco only raised an eyebrow as Kreacher reappeared with a _pop_ that nearly startled Harry into dropping his own plate.

"Jesus, Kreacher," he said. "Could you _walk_ , at least in the kitchen? Please," he amended, softening his tone. Kreacher gave him an apologetic look but returned his attention quickly to Draco.

"For our esteemed guest, I present the house's Meyer-lemon and Elvin honeyed shandy. As sir likes it." Kreacher deposited a cocktail glass full of sparkling liquid at Draco's elbow. "And for Master, the house offers a Chablis, lightly chilled."

"Thank you," Draco said, graciously bestowed a smile to Kreacher, which he had become better at taking in the intervening weeks. He folded into a profound bow, rather than bursting into tears. "Now tell me, how _is_ the house, Kreacher?"

"You're so good to ask, young master Malfoy. The house is being pleased, so pleased to have you. If only the Master were to take an inventory, oh, he would be surprised at what the house has proffered lately! It is being a new day in the majestic House of Black, yes sir."

"Thank you for that update. I'll be sure that the Master learns to take inventory," Harry shot Draco an incredulous look. Draco ignored him, adding in an undertone to the house-elf, "Muggles raised him, you know. It's not his fault he's slow to how to run a house such as this. We'll help him along. That will be all for now, Kreacher."

As Kreacher disappeared one last time, Harry managed to keep from jumping in his chair. It was his turn to raise a brow to Draco.

"Did you order a drink for me?"

"Not really. Try it with your dish and tell me it's not the right choice," he answered coolly. Harry speared a bite and chewed thoughtfully before taking a sip, watching Draco all the while. His face was stone as he ate and drank, saying nothing of either.

"It was a good choice," he admitted after a minute. Draco tilted his head, said nothing. The silence that descended was so unlike him that Harry flicked on the wireless. Something jazzy and ethereal filled the air.

 _Now it really feels like a date, you idiot_.

"Dinner was a bit presumptuous, no?" Draco said, at last, putting down his knife and fork. Harry sighed, mirroring him.

"It's evening, Draco. What's so presumptuous about having a meal together?"

"And WWN Two, hmm? You strike me as a man who'd be more with the times."

"I don't know half the standards, but I like the oldies. Wizard and Muggle," Harry said with a shrug. The bubbles of discomfort had passed, and now there was uneasiness in their place. Harry pushed peas around his plate with his fork, and when he looked up, he was astonished to see Draco ladling another portion onto his own.

He smirked. "I like channel two too. My coworkers think I've found some way to listen to programmes secretly through an earpiece."

"How's that?"

"Whenever my Galleon heats up when I'm working, I grin.”

He shook his head and pushed long strands of his fringe back behind one ear in his nervous way as he said it. Harry's breath caught in his throat, watching him do it.

“It's stupid, but I can't help it." Harry realized that he'd been staring, fork halfway to his mouth, and he hastily ate a bite, cheeks burning.

"I overheard them talking about me in the break-room," Draco continued, unaware of the effect he was having on Harry. "I think it's hilarious."

He smiled at his supper.

"This is good," he said as he carefully arranged one last bite and then put down his utensils, leaving it uneaten.

Harry nodded at his plate, hoping he looked deep in thought, and not as though he’d been staring at Draco like a wide-eyed first year.

"I'm glad you like it. It's the only pasta I can make without investing in the proper tools."

"Or spells," Draco said.

"Yes, or spells. It's easy enough."

He cleared his throat and looked to his empty glass of wine. It would be better to get a refill himself than wait for Kreacher to reappear by Apparition. "Can I take your plate?"

"What? Oh, right," Draco shook himself, quickly nipped up the last bite on his plate before passing it to Harry. "Some old habits seem to die hard."

Harry looked to the table and snapped his fingers to clear it. He was surprised when he went to stand; his wine glass had refilled when he wasn't looking. This was happening more often of late, the house anticipating his needs. A fire going in the grate, or candles lit the moment he entered a room.

He lowered back into his chair.

"Which habit is that? Refusing to clear your plate?"

"Something like that,” Draco said, leaning back in his chair. "My mum says to always leave the last bite behind as a show of restraint. I say it’s not a habit I want to hold on to."

“You call her mum,” Harry observed.

“Indeed, I do,” Draco said.

The lilt of his voice had become less combative. This was the part of the night when he spoke, and Harry listened, but it was the first time he’d verged from the mundane to the personal. It felt like when a beautiful songbird visited the windowsill in the lounge sometimes; if Harry was careful and quiet, he was occasionally allowed the pleasure of its unbridled company for some time.

"I was at a rehab clinic in Surrey a few years ago,” Draco said. Harry glanced at him but couldn’t catch his eye.

“Rehab? Like, Muggle rehab?” Harry asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” Draco took his wand and drew it along the wood's grain, making the dark lines sparkle gold for a few seconds until the glow faded out.

“We’re woefully behind Muggles when it comes to substance abuse. There's still no ward at Mungo’s for people addicted to potions or opiates, you know.”

Harry couldn’t hide his surprise at this sudden dearth of information. “How’d you end up in Surrey?”

“Blaise and Pansy. They’d had enough of my crises for one year, I suppose, and managed to have me admitted before I did something—”

He paused, searching for the word.

“Permanent. Something that I couldn’t come back from.”

“Like a burn.”

Draco nodded, still not looking at Harry.

“Yes. Like a burn.”

Harry hesitated. “Can I ask what you were in for?”

“You can,” Draco said, “but that’s a story for another time.” He paused for so long that Harry feared he’d broken the spell, but before he could figure out what to say, Draco spoke again.

“My doctor housed me on the eating disorder wing. She wanted me to be on the same meal plan as the ladies—I say, ladies, though there was another lad who joined us near the end of my tenure."

"Really," Harry said. He played with the napkin in his lap to keep from doing something else that would annoy Draco out of his recollection.

"Anyhow. It was as though I forgot how to eat in sixth year, and then I never got any better at it again. It was a skill I lacked.”

"You did miss a lot of meals that year," Harry said. He wasn’t going to bother pretending that he didn’t remember Draco from that time—sombre and oh so very gaunt. It had been evident to anyone with eyes that he’d been struggling, though Harry had been one of few who cared to try to find out for what.

Draco sucked his teeth. "You noticed," he said.

Harry had no words to explain this. Draco pierced him with a look, a crooked smile on his face. “Of course, you noticed. You watched me a lot back then. Obsessed, some might say.”

Harry huffed something close to a laugh and drank deeply from his wine. He couldn’t sit in the discomfort much longer, but luckily Draco didn’t push it further.

"When he took over the Manor, it was—” Draco swallowed, lost for words. “The things that happened at that table were abhorrent. It was truly disgusting, but we all had to come together for mealtimes and watch whatever fucking show The Dark Lord had deigned to bless us with.” He stopped playing with his wand at last. Harry could feel his blood rushing in his veins; he was so on edge.

“I'd cut my food into pieces and push it around, but I couldn't eat, and that was dangerous, being weak around the Manor." Draco looked briefly possessed and shook his head, clearing away whatever memory had been unearthed. "When we were back at school, I learned it was easier to skip meals entirely than taking them in my rooms. Snape got the kitchens to report to him when Slytherins ordered in. I think it was to keep us from treating school like a romantic getaway at the weekends.”

Draco scoffed, lost in a funny memory. A funny memory of _Snape_. Harry often forgot that Draco had a completely different relationship with their old potions master than he did. He had barely given it a thought at all.

"The point is that by the time I left the clinic, I’d shot up three inches, up to six feet. All it took was three squares a day.” He smiled his real smile then, lips sliding back to reveal those perfect, dangerously white teeth. “You should have seen Lucius' face when he saw me after I got out.” Draco pulled a strange face, amused and sick at the same time.

“I take it he wasn’t pleased?” Harry couldn’t quite understand the connection, but Draco nodded all the same.

“I have this theory,” he started slowly, “that it's the fact that I ended up taller than him, more than it took the aid of Muggles to get me healthy—that’s the reason he stopped talking to me."

The jar of Floo power on the mantle began to rattle as Harry’s blood set to boil. The thought of Lucius Malfoy could bring his ire up like no one else. Even as only a peon to Voldemort, his reach into Harry’s childhood had been traumatic, beginning with the infection of Ginny by a Horcrux and continuing to the present day, with his looming disappointment and sharp words and, and the thought that he still felt _safe_ enough to raise his hands to his own son—

Something touched Harry’s hand, and he startled back to the present. Draco was staring at him.

“It’s only me,” he said. “Pet?”

The rattling stopped.

"Sorry, I'm sorry,” Harry said. Draco waved a hand and resumed his lounging position once more, forcing levity.

"It's fine," he said, though his pulse clearly raced through the vein in his throat.

Harry swallowed, making tight fists so that the press of his fingernails into the fleshy parts of his hands would keep him tethered to the present.

“It takes a certain kind of prick not to want his son to surpass him at anything, I think," Harry said slowly.

"You're right on that point. But let's not dwell on him. The point,” Draco continued, “of this story is that I am unquestionably, without any doubt, much taller than you."

After a tense beat, Harry burst out laughing.

"You're mad, you know that?" he laughed around the words, and Draco shrugged, a dimple appearing in one cheek.

"Fine," Harry said, settling more deeply into his chair and letting his fists loosen. "Fine, I'll admit it. Draco Malfoy, you unquestionably are at least two inches—"

" _Three—_ "

"Alright, gods— _three_ inches taller than me, Harry Potter. But I want it on the record, that we were dead-even when we were back at school," he said. "If you ask me, it’s completely unfair that you got to grow late. It's practically cheating."

Draco chuckled. "Well, no one asked."

"I'm not going to be able to get over that." Harry sighed at the ceiling, watching as the strange shadows cast from the wall sconces flicker over the rough edges of the stone above their heads. It felt like being in a prehistoric cave, the light of the fire wavering in the wind.

"That's probably why I'm so short," he added in an undertone.

"I don't follow," Draco said.

Harry opened his mouth to explain and then closed it as he looked Draco in the eyes. Pebble grey today, unvarnished jewels set in a well-rested face.

 _Tread lightly,_ he thought, _it’s not so easy as all this._

"Well spit it out, Potter," Draco said before he amended it. "Pet. I mean, pet.”

"Do you really want to talk about the past? I, for one, am having a nice time.”

“And?” Draco asked.

“And I don’t want to go ruining it."

"We’ve dipped a toe into mine, and look—we’re both still here, alive and well. We'll never know if we can if we don't try.”

Draco reached over to still Harry’s with a touch to his elbow. It grounded him—connecting them so that Draco’s low tones soothed Harry’s nerves just as his touched anchored him, calming his racing heart. “If we can’t admit that we have pasts, our topics of conversation are likely to dry up rather quickly.”

Harry swallowed the ball of worry rising in his esophagus. He was tipsy, not yet drunk. It would have to be enough to crumble the edges of his high walls. Enough to let one visitor peek over the top, at least.

"Okay," Harry said, wringing the napkin as though he wished to kill it. "Back in seventh year, I spent a lot of time on the run. I should say we—Hermione and Ron and I. We were at it for months but had to run without warning, so we had very little with us and no food most of the time." Draco became so still that it was like he had stopped breathing. Like Harry was the pretty bird at the window. It gave him the courage to plow on.

"Hermione was good at starving because she's got willpower in spades. I don't think I'll ever know another person with that kind of strength.” Draco sat still, face rapt with attention. Harry found himself pausing overly long, fighting to push each new sentence out. “Ron was awful with it, probably because he'd hardly been famished a day in his life."

"And you?" Draco asked. He pulled Harry’s hands up from his lap and placed them, palms-up on the tabletop. The napkin he'd been toying with was tossed aside as Draco cupped Harry’s hands with his own. "Go on," he said.

"I barely noticed," Harry said.

Draco started to smooth his thumb upwards from Harry's wrist, edging slowly up. Then he did it again, gently pushing as though he were wringing nervousness out through his fingertips. When he finished with one hand, he laid it down and started on the other. His eyes didn’t leave this work. Harry watched too, as hands burned and smooth took his, broad and callused, and caressed them.

"Tell me why, pet," Draco said, his voice smooth like silk.

"It's something I can shut off. Being hungry. I still go days sometimes without eating when things go sideways."

"Why's that?"

Harry's pulse raced. It always did when Draco touched him. He was sure that he could feel it too, the steady thump growing faster beneath his strokes.

"I had to get good at ignoring hunger when I was little. I—they—”

He paused, but Draco didn’t look up. It was as though he knew scrutiny of any kind would be too much. Harry always did his best talking into dark rooms, or quickly, with his eyes squeezed shut.

He took a deep breath and tried a new tack.

_One word after the other, and don’t stop unless he tells you too._

“My aunt and uncle saw me as both a burden and an obstacle. They didn’t want me to assimilate—they wanted me to disappear. So I prepared food that I couldn’t touch, and I was given the excess, if there was any, out of what they could pretend was overzealous penny-pinching. They hadn't planned on having a second mouth to feed, so they decided not to feed it. But they withheld meals out of cruelty on top of that. It was an acceptable way for them to show their anger with me, I think— they didn’t see it as abuse. I didn’t either—it wasn’t the kind that showed too obviously.”

“Not like bruises,” Draco murmured.

Harry hummed his agreement. “Not like bruises, and I had enough of those thanks to Dudley and the other kids. I think,” he said, staring into the crackling fire, “I think that they thought they could get around me existing if they tried hard enough."

"By starving you to death?" Draco stopped the massage; his fingers curled into Harry's palm. There wasn't comfort offered in his tone, but incredulity.

Disbelief was an emotion Harry could deal with. Pity was not.

"Not quite," he said with a half-smile. "By keeping me small and making it clear that I wasn't consequential.”

“In comparison to your enormous cousin, you’d seem small already, wouldn’t you have?”

Harry let out a small sigh of relief. Of course Draco had read of Dudley and the Dursley’s.

“I forget that you know the backstory, now.”

“Starvation somehow didn’t make it into your book, darling," Draco said drily. "What were they really like?”

Harry thought about this a long time before answering.

“They were normal—it was an obsession with a certain kind of unimpeachable purity that they believed they had, and I didn’t. They sat at the table while they had breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was a freak, so I lived in a cupboard; I got the scraps." Harry sighed.

"I had meals pulled for days at a time." He winced at the memories of bars on the window and locks on the outside of the door. He didn't usually let his memories stray so far back. They were muted by time, but they were there all the same.

"I mean, well—first I was a freak because of my parents, and then my magic, and then for being a _nasty back-biter_ , as my uncle would say."

Harry was careful to avoid Draco's eye, not trusting that he wouldn't try for a peek inside of Harry's mind.

Harry cleared his throat, suddenly tight.

"It doesn't matter anymore.”

"Look at me," Draco said quietly. “Don’t say that.”

"Don't go poking around in my mind," Harry warned.

"I wasn't," Draco frowned, miffed. "I don't need to—your thoughts are written quite clearly across your face most of the time."

“The point," Harry pulled his hands away though he was unable to break eye contact, "is that I thought I'd turn out taller, like my Dad. And it's a right laugh, people asking for my autograph and immediately following up with _‘I thought you'd be taller,’_ as though it's my fault, and they're terribly disappointed."

A muscle in Draco's jaw twitched, his eyes fiery, locked on Harry's.

"I bet you hate that, don't you," he said. He ran a hand through Harry's hair the way that sent sparks through his nervous system, and tugged, enough to pull a sigh from Harry's lips and make his eyes tremble closed. And when Harry opened his eyes again, Draco offered, instead of an apology, his smile. His brilliant, kilowatt smile, the kind that spoke to buckets of money spent young and often to maintain, its beauty both artificial and innate. It was the way he smiled that made Harry want to throw him on the table and kiss it from his lips. It was like a stand-off, them still talking, talking, talking as though they weren't both burning in their skins to have each other.

"It's the first thing I overhear when all I've done is set a glamour to cover my scar, you know. _'Can't be him gran; there's no way Harry Potter is that short.' "_

Draco laughed, biting his lip the way Harry knew meant that he was thinking of him naked, or getting there.

"I like you small," Draco said, trailing his hand down the back of Harry's head to massage his neck. "It's only fair, with the world already so in love with you otherwise. It would be a crime for you actually to be perfect."

"That's so rude of you to say," Harry said, pulling him near. "You think _I'm_ small? And only tall people are perfect? I've easily got two stone on you."

Draco leaned in. "Whatever. Compact." He tilted his jaw up like he welcomed a kiss. Expected one. "I never said I don't like you this way."

"No, I think you said I'm practically perfect," Harry leaned in so that he could growl his next words directly into Draco's ear, "and I think I need for you to shut up now because I'd really, really like to fuck you."

Harry pulled back to enjoy watching the effect of his words explode in the imagination of Draco. The moment of pique at being told to shut up, followed by the surprised inhale at the promise of that word. Of a _fuck_ , finally. Of him.

"What?" he said, already pushing back from his chair to stand.

"You heard me. I want to fuck you. I need it, and I think you do too. Bed?" Harry stood too, and when he moved for Draco, their lips met in an instant.

"Yes," Draco breathed the word into Harry's mouth, and suddenly they were there, Harry's ankle banging into the wood of the bed frame the way it always did.

"Clothes," Harry said, struggling out of his t-shirt and shoes at the same time. "Off."

Draco stripped bare with impressive timing and snuck his hands into the top of Harry's trousers to help him out of them and his pants in one go. Harry yanked his glasses off, and it was on. They tumbled to the bed a mess of limbs, little sounds of pleasure humming from Draco's throat.

"Lie still, stay just like that," Harry said once he managed to wrestle Draco onto his back.

"And why would I— _ungh._ "

Draco's words died in his throat as Harry shimmied down on the bed and took his erection into his mouth. He loved Draco's cock, no question about it. He loved the way his jaw stretched to fit it, loved the feel of it in his palm, and how it looked, pink and shiny when he sucked off.

"Gods, fuck, fuck, fuck," Draco muttered in between spates of silence. Harry caressed him with his mouth, proud of how he could undo Draco so readily with a well-placed lick. Working his way down his shaft, he held himself at the bottom, taking practiced breaths through his nose so he could swallow around Draco's prick and make him moan, loud and deep, the way Harry loved to hear him. A thrill went through him as he gripped at the soft, hidden skin of his inner thighs.

 _I know how you like it, too_ , he thought.

"Could you—a finger?” Draco's voice was breathy when he asked, his body writhing under Harry’s touch. His fingers wound tightly into Harry's hair in a possessive gesture, the kind that Harry usually loved. But right now, he wanted to be the one doing the possessing.

Harry sucked off, took a breath. "I will if you stay still," he said, trying for a look that would scold him. He spoke the incantations Draco had taught him, pleased at how his cock actually _jumped_ when he did them wandlessly. Draco was a bit of a slag for power; he'd come to notice.

Draco looked wantonly down at him, lips, plump and wet from his biting of them.

"What, you can't hit a moving target?" he taunted. Harry wiped his mouth on his shoulder and brushed a hand up, freeing himself from Draco's controlling hand in his hair. He shimmied down towards the foot of the bed and grabbed him by his skinny hips, dragging him down the bed without issue. Draco yelled in surprise; his mouth left hanging open.

"What do you think—" he started.

"Think I'm _small_ , huh," Harry teased, playfully pinching his side. "I may be shorter than you, but I think you'll find I have no trouble in throwing you around."

Draco grumbled something unintelligible as Harry pushed his leg up by the back of his thigh, bending it into his chest. Placing most of his weight there, he curled down to suck at his cock again. At the touch of his tongue to the spongy head, Draco's neck curled as he arched off the mattress. Harry repeated the move deliberately, causing a litany of curse words to tumble from Draco's mouth.

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ, pet, where'd you learn to suck cock like that, yes, _ungh_ —"

Harry knew what he was doing, and he wanted Draco to beg for it. He massaged his testicles with his free hand, occasionally sucking off to spit at them until the hand on them was as wet as the inside of his mouth. His thumb swung down to rub at Draco's hole, eliciting fresh ramblings. It felt raw, totally carnal, Draco’s wet skin melting from creamy white to the perfect pink of his arsehole. Harry was so hard he could hardly think.

"Fuck, why won't you finger me? I'll be good, I'll make you feel so good, I need something inside of me,” Draco whined.

Harry pressed the pad of his thumb against the puckered hole, applying only the lightest pressure. “Why would I when you haven’t asked nicely yet?”

“I _am_ asking nicely _,_ " Draco arched his back, trying for a centimetre more, “please, pet, please—”

It was due to the added _please_ that Harry hooked his thumb in. Draco’s back arched even further into the touch, his groan bone-deep, hips threatening to lift off of the mattress. Harry held him still, bringing his power to the moment, and Draco unwound under this show of strength divinely. He was breaking down with only the pad of Harry's thumb inside him, his mouth moving on him.

" _Christ_ ," Draco panted, "please, more. I'll be good; come up here, please."

Harry sucked off and released Draco's thigh from his grasp, panting already.

"You hold here," he said, and Draco nodded frantically, gripping behind his knee to keep himself open for Harry. Harry removed his thumb and sucked two fingers into his mouth. That was another thing he knew Draco liked; fingers in Harry's mouth, whether they were his or Harry's, didn't seem to matter much. They both watched as he pressed them, rubbing a slow circle at his entrance and pushed one inside. Goosebumps erupted across Harry's chest from Draco's exhalation at the feeling.

"That's good?" he asked, and Draco nodded vigorously again, little sounds in his throat. Harry took his time, settling in to kneel, realizing that the air in the room seemed unusually warm, as though the house had prepped the space for them to be more comfortable in it while naked.

Draco looked perfectly content; white ribbons of hair stuck to his forehead as he went a high pink—Harry had him nearly incoherent. He kept one finger inside, pulsing gently in and out as he leaned down to kiss him.

“I could finger fuck you forever,” Harry whispered. Draco smiled, biting his bottom lip.

"More," Draco breathed, “please more.” Harry was slow to add another finger, caught in the thrall of how hot and tight Draco felt around him. Watching as his eyelids fluttered, nearly opening but not quite. Feeling the sounds he made as vibrations against his lips, kissing him gently. Feeling inside of him, pliant and eager.

"How about three?” Harry asked. Draco carded his hair and held his face back a few inches so he could look into his eyes.

"You should see yourself," Draco ignored his question, gazing at him.

Harry pushed both fingers in to the knuckle and watched his eyes shut, neck arching, and pulled out, slowly, dragging his fingers along the insides of his channel. "What is it that's so interesting to look at?"

"Your eyes," Draco said, "they've _—ungh—_ ” he exaggerated the arch of his back as Harry curled his fingers deep inside of him, pulsing that little button of nerves that would be his undoing. “They've no business being so green,” he murmured.

Harry watched his throat swallow hard. He wanted to say more but held back.

Then, "You don't need three," Draco said. “I want to feel you stretch me out."

"Draco," Harry breathed, warning. "You can be very persuasive, but I'd love to feel you with three first."

"Why all this waiting, you don't have to—" Draco started to complain, but Harry let a long line of his spit drip onto the fingers fucking him, and that visual shut him right up.

"I'd rather be careful," Harry mumbled, barely realizing what he was saying as he added his ring finger to the mix, and he honestly _could_ do this to Draco forever. If this was as far as they ever went together, it could be enough, the feel of him around his fingers, the precome that leaked from his cock on an especially good push, and his sounds—

"Please give me your cock," Draco ground out at last. He wrapped his hand around the back of Harry's neck to pull him close.

"Please, Harry, I want to feel you open me up, please," he closed his eyes and kept mumbling encouragement, hips rolling to eke out the most of the feeling of Harry's fingers inside of him.

_Harry. He said Harry, he wants you, Harry._

The word clanged around in Harry's mind as he pulled his fingers free, whispering the spell to conjure oil, thick and slippery in his palm. He coated his own cock, long-neglected and rock-hard. It was going to be impossible, he thought, evident that his prick was far too thick for the tiny space his fingers had prepared.

In a daze, Harry lined himself up to that soft spot, the head of his cock trapped between the small, smooth globes of Draco's arse.

"Okay?" he asked, and Draco nodded, chin to chest, looking down between them to watch.

"Yes, come on, yes," Draco said as he pushed enough to apply pressure, and that was what it took to stop Draco speaking as he stilled for the first time since they'd fallen into the bed. With one hand at Draco’s waist, Harry could feel the rise and fall of each breath inside the space of his palm. Harry marvelled at him, his body luminous as the full moon, hot and soft and hard beneath him.

Then he pushed further until the crown of his cock popped inside. The movement drew a sharp inhale from Draco's lips.

"Okay?" Harry asked with his mouth pressed to Draco's jaw. Draco made a long, muffled sound before turning his face to offer his mouth for a wet kiss.

"Draco, is it—"

“Ah, it’s—" he hissed as Harry shifted, the blunt tips of his nails digging in where he squeezed at the backs of Harry's arms, “I—don't move, I need a minute."

“Okay, okay. Breathe," Harry smiled. He stopped moving altogether, sharing breaths and watching as the lines from Draco's forehead smoothed, his eyelashes fluttering, on the verge of opening but not quite.

“Bit out of practice, are we?” Harry said, and Draco’s chuckle sent warmth through him, even as his insides tensed around Harry, making him gasp.

The muscles in Harry’s arms and back started to burn as he held still, but he didn’t mind. It was incredible, just like that. Feeling the racing pulse of Draco’s heartbeat under the skin and around his cock.

“Alright," Draco whispered, “you can move."

Harry rolled his hips languidly forwards, rewarded with the incredible feel of the heated slide into Draco's body. Draco's grip re-doubled, but his whispered, "Yes, _oh god,_ " spoke volumes about how the burn was turning into something pleasurable for him too.

It was true that Harry's cock was doing the stretching. Each new push drew a hiss, and then the pleasure would come as that new depth opened up to Harry. Harry pushed up to his knees, the better to be able to look down at Draco and watch the rosy flush rise from his throat to his cheeks, catch the moment he arched his neck and closed his eyes, his breath hitching.

“Gods, that’s good,” Draco purred after a few minutes.

Harry couldn’t help but laugh a little himself, looking down the long line of their bodies to where they were joined.

“You know you’ve got a few more inches to go, right?”

Excitement sparked in Draco’s eyes, their almond shape widening.

“Oh,” he puffed the word, and Harry experimentally circled his hips, pushing in a fraction more. “We’re going to need more lube.”

Harry was only too eager to whisper the spell and pulled out, quickly travelling down Draco's body to mouth his erection, typically so unyieldingly hard, which had flagged a bit.

"I was concentrating on other things," Draco joked, and Harry had to pull off to laugh.

"You're doing splendidly in the _other things_ , department." He rubbed Draco's prick slickly against his belly and licked up that vein on its underside, the thick one that he knew Draco loved to be followed by his tongue from the root to the tip as he tenderly fingered more of the oil into Draco's now loosened hole with his middle finger, then adding his pointer, revelling in the sounds Draco made, little pants and asks for _more_ and _please_ until it was—

“The next thing inside me had best be your cock, or I’ll gut you, pet. I swear on all that is good and holy, I will.”

Harry kissed the tip of Draco’s leaking cock one last time and rejoined him, accepting the bite to his bottom lip as punishment for pulling out in the first place. To be honest, there was nowhere he wanted to be more than inside Draco, and this time, when he lined up, he slotted nearly home. Both of them moaned at the feeling.

“ _Fuck_ yes,” Draco said, voice strained, as Harry bollocks finally connected with his arse, and wasn’t that the feeling to end all feelings? Harry lost track of time as Draco steadily pled for more, first with his body, then with his mouth. He rocked back to meet Harry's thrusts, little grunts punctuating each push.

“More,” Draco said, holding Harry’s eyes with his own.

“Are you sure?” Harry asked, and Draco nodded, a bit frantic.

"Please," he said, and there was nothing Harry wouldn't give him at that moment. An island, a fortune, a house made of gold—if it made Draco happy, made him look at Harry the way he did right then, Harry would gladly give it to him.

Harry stopped and pulled Draco's hips up so that he could kneel. Draco watched him, slack-jawed, eyes glazed with total lust as Harry took each of his legs behind his knees and used them to fold him in half. “Anything you want,” he ground out, slowly pushing into him again and again and again. Pleasure made Harry want to smash his eyes shut, but he found he couldn't while he had Draco to watch. He was devastatingly beautiful this way—open, desperate, mouth ajar, panting, his neck arched fully. The only view that compared was when Harry looked down and watched himself impaling Draco's body, flush and perfect below him.

“You’re so—fucking tight,” he mumbled mostly to himself, picking up the pace of his thrusts as Draco grew louder, the better to pull more sounds from him, to feel the hot clench of his body wrapped around his cock, to watch as he fell apart.

“Harder,” Draco said. He pulled Harry down to meet him, right knee over his shoulder and the left held up by Harry's forearm. His eyes were black holes now, all semblance of control gone. Harry lost his breath to see the look on his face and how his hair was mussed, wild in the face of their fucking.

“Like this?” Harry pulled nearly completely out and slammed back in, and Draco shouted in a way that would wake the neighbours if the poor Muggle dears could hear anything through the wards.

"Yes, harder," Draco gasped between bruising kisses. "Fuck me harder, god—"

They didn't have long. The wet sounds of their bodies slapping together filled the room, with Draco's cries gradually gaining in volume as Harry let go and properly fucked him, as deep and as hard as he dared.

“Touch yourself,” Harry said, feeling the bob of Draco’s cock between them, and Draco started babbling as soon as his hand wedged between their bellies and encircled his own prick.

"Oh, _fuck,_ ” he swore with his eyes smashed shut, his voice going thin and reedy, and he started to plead, “I'm going to come, Harry. Harry, I'm going to come, I'm going to come—"

"Good," Harry found himself saying. "Come for me then.” His hips snapped with a ferocity he’d never had with anyone before, "I want to see you—to come—all over."

His attention flicked between Draco's face—a pained frown on the precipice of orgasm—and his Mark—so incredibly black against the white of the sheets, the sinews of his arm flexing as he pressed back against the headboard.

It was all too much. Draco's face screwed up as he shouted, screamed, really, arse clenching around Harry as he came. Harry felt the spunk streaming over his chest and kept fucking him through it, on the tipping point of his own orgasm. Draco's hand slowed as Harry knew that he was past the point of return, so bloody close. He pulled out to finish, his hand a slippery grip around his shaft until Draco realized what was happening.

"No, no, no," he said archly, the hint of a whine in his voice, "come in me. I want you to come _in_ _me._ "

"Oh," was all Harry managed, and it was with a stupefied smile that he pushed back into him with a shared groan, the feeling of Draco's thighs squeezing his body as close as he could, his long neck revealed to be sucked and licked and bitten, and it was then that Harry pushed in as deeply as he could and he came.

"Inside of me," Draco whispered as Harry trembled with the force of his orgasm, moments of tension followed by groaning, wet release into Draco. He marvelled at how his own come added wetness to his final thrusts that he could feel and only made him want to be able to fuck into Draco forever, just a little more, never wanting to stop.

Eventually, he was spent and collapsed where he was, two bodies panting in time. Draco himself seemed beyond recognition or care; both of his knees remained locked over the tops of Harry's shoulders, though the one of the left slid off to the side from the sweat built between them. Harry turned his head to stare at it, folded so casually.

"How is it that you're so bendy?" he asked. Draco only grinned, then laughed, his muscles drawing a gasp from Harry when they squeezed his softening prick. He took his legs behind the ankles and stretched them so that his feet were flat against the headboard and wiggled his toes at Harry's expression of wonder, and then let them loose, to curl back around Harry’s shoulders, heels bumping none too gently onto his back.

“Wouldn't you like to know," he teased.

"I would, I really would." Harry waited on top of him, catching his breath before reluctantly peeling his body from Draco’s. They were slippery everywhere they touched, and Harry couldn't help but laugh as he rolled over into a wet spot, only to nudge Draco aside and have him wince about the same.

A few whispered spells later, and the bed was slightly drier, their bodies scourged of sticky messes. Harry wished internally that his _Scourgify_ wasn’t so strong; it didn’t leave so much as the scent of Draco’s sweat on his skin. He watched absently as Draco leaned over the edge of the bed and fumbled around, taking the time to memorize the curve of his arse, where the cheeks grew fuzzy blonde like a peach.

“Next time a wet flannel will do,” Harry mumbled aloud, sniffing his hand and being put off by the lingering scent of only lavender—nothing of Draco left. He liked the smell of their sex if he was honest.

“What’s that?” Draco asked as he returned to the bed with a cigarette between two long fingers, looking distinctly miffed. He sat gingerly, opting for a lean with his legs staggered behind him.

“Nothing. What’s the matter?” Harry asked.

“I can’t find my wand, and I’m too tired to light it myself without it.” Draco jut his lip out a little for added effect. Harry rolled his eyes but lit it for him wordlessly just to watch him try to keep from smiling.

“Couldn’t throw me a ‘thanks’ or it might kill you?”

Draco took a long drag and blew the smoke out his nostrils, looking not unlike a snow-white dragon stuck in human form.

“You’re brilliant, and I want to suck your cock for days and days,” he said instead, biting his puffy lower lip and then letting it go. A spark of interest travelled from Harry’s spine to his cock, though that wasn’t enough to generate a new erection. Well. Not quite, but given about ten minutes, Harry was pretty sure it would. “Will that suffice?”

Harry located his glasses and wand, opening the bay windows to let in the chilly evening air.

“It’ll do,” he said. He returned to the rumpled bed and lay down to stare up at the ceiling.

"How do you sit like that?" he asked. Draco shrugged, joining him on his back.

"Attitude legs. They're—whatever."

"You're so full of secrets," Harry said. Draco was silent, puffs of smoke rising above them.

When he spoke again, he stretched for emphasis, a comfortable silence having descended in the room.

"Gods, I haven't been fucked like that in..." the words trailed off into nothing. Draco traced the backs of his nails over the sensitive skin of Harry's inner thigh.

Harry felt suddenly sure that the since in question was before his time, even though Draco could be fucking other people.

 _Of course he is,_ he snapped at himself, his subconscious annoyed at this sprig of optimism blossoming out of nowhere. _Where do you think he goes when you’re not available? Do you think people who look like that sit around twiddling their thumbs while bumbling idiots like you struggle through whatever tedious bullshit you attend to all day?_

"Since when?" Harry asked. He wanted to be sure that the feeling in his gut was right about this. Draco didn't look at him but also didn't stop the touching.

"A while," Draco said. He turned to face Harry, a lazy smile spreading across his face. “I really needed that."

"Was it him?" Harry asked. Draco's face became impassive, an easy trick for him, and he lay on his back again, eyes trained on the ceiling. His hair was an absolute mess, and he looked high off their shag, glowing, beautiful, and all Harry could think about was whether Justin had gotten to see Draco like this too. This version of Draco that Harry felt was his and his alone.

There was a pregnant pause.

"Inappropriate," Draco said at last.

"That's a no then," Harry said. He was cross. He didn't much care.

"And what if it was?" Draco turned to face him. "What if Justin was the last good, hard fuck I've had? What about it?"

"He wasn’t,” Harry said, looking out the window. He shouldn’t have opened this line of questioning when he didn’t really want to know the answer.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

"What if I let him fuck me raw, just like you?” He sat up, staring down at Harry. “What if he was bigger? Split me in two? What if he was so much better than you?”

Harry couldn’t look at him, or he knew his face would give away how hurt these theoreticals made him. He didn't like Draco like this. He was still uncommonly capable of cruelty, where Harry was concerned.

"If he were, you would have told me, just to rub it in."

Draco crushed out the cigarette on the side table. "Rub it in exactly _how_ , Potter?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, "Don't call me Potter—"

"I'll call you whatever the fuck I like when you're an insolent shite.” Draco summoned another cigarette and then flung it at the lamp, rounding on Harry instead.

“What's got your knickers in a twist?” he continued. “I haven't done anything wrong here, in case you've forgotten the terms of our agreement."

"I know that—"

"You're jealous," Draco said. His fingers trailed down Harry's abdomen, then lower still. “You’re jealous that someone else has had me.”

Harry's cock took notice of the touch and jerked, bobbing away from his stomach as Draco got him hard again, and wasn’t that the rub? That even angry or sad or distrustful, Draco could have him hard in seconds because what they had was lust, pure and simple, and Harry was the fuck up for trying to impose anything more than that.

"It's not that," Harry said. He pushed Draco's hand away, but it came back a second later, and he didn’t have the resolve to push it away a second time. Harry let him scratch his skin ever lower this time, into his pubic hair.

"It is, though, isn't it? The thought of someone else with me makes you angry. I should have pegged you for the possessive type; it fits your need to be first, to own everything you touch. You do love having your name on things, don't you—"

"That's such bullshit.” The venom in Harry’s voice made Draco’s fingers still for a moment. He looked as though Harry had struck him, and then nothing. The blank, disdainful look of his mask.

Harry sighed. “Look, forget I said anything."

"It doesn't have to be a bad thing, pet," Draco said, his hand finally making it to its target. He wrapped his fingers around Harry's cock and began stroking him fully hard again, and Harry let him.

"I bet that's why you fucked me through the headboard. So I wouldn't forget it." Harry opened his mouth to complain but stopped short. Draco's eyes lit up when Harry didn't scold him. He thought he was gaining the upper hand and clearly liked it.

"That's not—I didn't. I'm not trying to compete with anyone Draco."

Fear bloomed in Harry, odd and out of place.

_He’s not going to want you anymore, not now that you’ve annoyed him._

"I won't forget it, mind you," Draco continued. He was pretending levity, as though they were only joking. "I wouldn't mind more of where that came from. You want to shag me like I'm a thing you own? Like you own me? Go right ahead."

"I don't want to own you," Harry said. Draco jerked him slowly, moving his fist to cup the head, still wet under the foreskin. Harry's breathing quickened under the slow strokes.

This wasn't good. This wasn't what he wanted.

_What do you want?_

He wanted Draco again. He wanted to cry out, to tell him to stop. He wanted to go back before the row. He wanted to skip forwards to the part where he apologized, and Draco didn't leave him alone. Draco couldn't leave him, not the way he felt now.

_But he can, and he will because he's already as good as done with you._

"You do, Harry, you obviously do. You want something from me, and you're too much of a fucking coward to take it," Draco hissed.

"I want this," Harry rolled so that they were side by side. He gripped hard at Draco's hip to line them up. Draco gasped and blinked, close enough that his eyelashes batted against Harry’s cheek. Harry wanted him more now than ever. He wanted him again, wanted him today and tomorrow, and the day after that. It was like his very bones had come to need Draco, like his molecules were magnetized, continually seeking him out.

"I want to see you, Draco," Harry ground out his words. "I want to see you and not be constantly reminded that it's an arrangement."

They both pulled faster now, on the path to come again before the sweat on their bodies from the first round even had a chance to evaporate. Harry hooked a leg around Draco's hip to hold him close, his free hand cupping the back of his head.

"Maybe I want something normal," he whispered.

Draco made a breathy little sound, the one he did when he was close. He closed his eyes, and Harry pulled faster.

"I don't want to wonder if you're out there, fucking some idiot when I'm not available."

Draco suddenly stopped and planted his hands against Harry’s chest, shoving him roughly away. Harry caught himself by the headboard as he crashed into the side table, a constellation of pain erupting across his back.

"You know what? _Fuck you._ "

Draco tore the duvet into his lap, leaving Harry naked and cold in the expanse of the mattress. Harry had no idea what to do next.

"That's what I want, just something _normal_ ,” he said. “How's that so bad?"

Draco dragged a hand through his hair, practically snarling, and Harry knew he would be hurt by the words he lashed out with.

"You want it all, don’t you? You want the ease of sex and none of the trouble with the rules," he laughed hollowly. "I should have fucking seen this coming. You always did think that rules were beneath you. Like back in first-year—"

"This isn't some fucking Quidditch match, Draco!” Harry was yelling—he didn't want to be, but his ire was up, and this was all wrong, and fighting was what he and Draco did best anyway, wasn't it? The coziness in the room was suddenly gone as a sharp wind whipped through the room, the frames hanging on the walls rattling. Harry hoped it was just a wintry blast and not his mood whipping up a storm. "We're not in bloody school anymore, remember?"

"We agreed to terms!" Draco yelled back.

"And why can't we change them?" Harry asked, exasperation pouring out of him.

"We agreed," Draco repeated, but he didn't say anything else. He crumpled the blanket closer to his chest, holding on to it like a life raft. Harry knew that this momentary show of hurt and fear wouldn't last long. Soon the haughtiness would swoop in to hide it.

He didn't know what to do, so his body did the thinking for him. He crawled across the bed and reached out, finding one of Draco's hands in the folds of the blanket, and held on. Draco's breath hitched— _pain, again, he never tells you when he's hurting_ —and Harry lightened the touch, massaging the scarred skin beneath his thumb.

"I'm sorry," he said, his tone as low and even as he could manage. "Tell me, though—why can't we change the rules? I'm asking you, honestly," he said, quieter this time.

"Oh, let's see," Draco spoke acidly, "changing the rules. Would it be so that you could treat me like I don't exist in public and retain exclusive access to my cock? Is that it?"

Draco gave him a fake smile, though his eyes were wet, threatening to shed tears that Harry knew would be the end of him. How could he have done something to make Draco want to cry? What kind of a fucking monster was he?

"What an incredibly compelling offer you make. Please give me a moment to collect my thoughts so I can keep from creaming myself that the magnificent _Harry Potter_ would deign—"

"Draco, please stop." Harry crawled closer still and mimicked what he had done earlier.

"That's not what I'm saying, at all."

He smoothed his thumb from wrist to fingertip, finger to finger, holding his one burned hand between his own; _I must not tell lies_ , glowing faintly up at him.

Draco didn't pull away. "What are you asking for, then? What is it?"

His voice threatened to break around the words. "Do you want more conversation before the fucking, but only if I pretend I'm a virgin aside from you? Or for me to stay the night, but only if I use the Floo to come and go, because god forbid someone sees me leave out the front way? Spit it out, won’t you—"

 _Stop being a fucking coward and tell him the truth so he can leave you for his own good_.

"I want you, Draco," Harry whispered. "And I know that’s naive of me, to think you’d want me too when you probably have someone different to take you out every other night of the week, or to—to fuck, or whatever. And that’s fine,” Harry shrugged, pretending nonchalance.

_He's going to run, he's going to laugh, he's—_

“And I know it's selfish that I want more of your time. I'm a selfish prick. I know that I haven't much to offer, but I just want you so badly." Harry shrugged, mouth twisted to the side, "I know how trite it sounds.”

Draco was still and silent, scrutinizing him through eyes closed nearly to slits.

“Are you," he asked very slowly, "calling me a slut?”

“What?" Feeling Draco pull his hand from his grip, Harry redoubled it. "No! No, absolutely not. I just know that others—everyone is better at _life_ than I am. I bet you have a shortlist of guys who would kill to take you out for—I don't know, for sashimi—and know what to order."

Draco's scowl intensified, and Harry could tell he was only digging himself a deeper grave, but he had to keep talking now that he'd started.

_Might as well keep digging._

"Just—you know! Guys who you wouldn't be embarrassed by, and who you don't have to teach everything to. Who’ve been to the l’Oeuvre and know—things! Regular-people things, like what summer camp was like, or how to go on a normal adult date. I assume you're busy with—” _don't make me say it_ , Harry thought, "—these other people who are so much more your calibre, and I’m just a spot of fun, I guess. I don’t know why you keep coming back, really, but I know that whatever you’re looking for, I'm not it."

Draco glowered properly, then, pulling his hand free.

“Are you calling me a _snob?_ ”

 _“No,”_ Harry exclaimed, “I’m just not so stupid as to think that you might want me! As a—as a date. For more than—this.”

Draco crooked his head, confused. Harry hated that he was being made to say out loud what they both knew, but now that he’d started, the words kept coming, an endless stream of embarrassment.

“I can’t give you much, and I’m—I’m still basically a virgin, how it counts. I feel like I'm a disappointment and can’t keep up with you, and I don’t want to keep this up if you don’t want to as well. You don’t owe me anything. What we agree to is fucking, when convenient, and it's been fantastic. If it’s just fucking that you want, I’ll deal with that on my own.” Harry swallowed around the pit in his throat, a scratchy, painful thing. He needed to force the last words out before he lost the nerve, so he closed his eyes and pushed through. “But I want, still. I want you, still, even though it’s wrong of me to think I deserve you.”

When Harry opened his eyes, Draco was still there, staring at him, wide-eyed. He just nodded over and over. Harry kept thinking he’d say something but every time he opened his mouth to speak, he’d shut it again, and it took a minute for Harry to realize it was because he was close to tears.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Harry said. Draco smiled thinly and pushed the heels of his palms into closed eyes.

"Please don't, not over me." He edged closer to Draco, wary as one approaching a wounded animal, and finally pressed a kiss to the knobby collarbone protruding at the top of his shoulder. Draco cleared his throat and leaned his head into Harry's chest; a truce, of sorts.

“I haven’t done this with anyone in a long time,” he said, so quietly that Harry could barely hear him. He pulled his knees up to under his chin, curling into an ever-smaller shape. “Bottomed. I usually—usually I don’t like it.”

“What’s a long time?” Harry asked.

Draco was silent.

Harry didn’t want to, but still, he pressed. “Like, a year?”

Draco puffed out a breath. “More."

“Really?” Harry asked and could feel Draco's nod against his chest.

“But...” Harry bit the flesh inside his lip hard, steeling himself for the question that would cost him to ask, “you did for me, even though you didn’t like it?”

Harry was already thinking of what he’d have to do to purge this feeling, worse even than when he’d played host to the evilest thing in the world. A sense that he wasn’t dirtied by the outside world but somehow contained it in himself—that he was the dark, pitiful thing—a stain that needed to be bleached away.

But Draco shifted closer to him, his breaths tickling the fuzz on Harry’s chest.

“Usually, I didn’t like it because I didn’t trust the other person, and they didn’t care. About me. And that's because usually when I'd pull, it was with men who'd take one look at me and see a stand-in for the barely legal twinks in their favourite porn clips, and they'd want to fuck me like it was a porn clip, and it was awful." Draco's fingers trailed aimlessly across Harry's chest, and he settled in closer. Harry arranged the blanket around them as best he could—the window remained open, a chill descending that was so complete that their breaths were clouds of mist. "I’d pretend it was fine, out of laziness or lack of care or loneliness, maybe, and it because it was easy.” Draco wiped a cheek, and Harry kissed his hair and held that hand, closed it close to his chest. “This isn’t that, though. I knew I’d like it with you. And I did—you have to know I did?”

Harry was afraid of what would happen if he lied, if he opened his mouth at all just then, so he sat very still instead. He rarely _knew_ anything about how Draco felt, but he hoped, and right now, he wanted to believe Draco; wanted to think that the sounds he’d pulled from him were real and not Draco taking pity on him. Draco kept talking, filling in the void Harry left.

“I—that was good, Harry. Better than good, even, I mean, it was kind of incredible. You’re spectacular—”

“Stop—”

“No, I’m serious. This doesn’t mean nothing to me, and there’s no one else.” He pulled away just enough to be able to look Harry in the eyes, and Harry was afraid to name the emotion that radiated from them because it was impossible. “My dance card remains empty, other than you.”

“Your dance card," Harry repeated, "were you actually born in 1781? Because if you're a vampire or something, I can deal with that."

"Stop joking," Draco said, though a smile threatened to form. Harry shook his head.

"That can't be true,” he breathed, but Draco kept nodding, sniffling back unshed tears.

"Why would I lie to you? About this?"

Like a bird flapping its wings, a hopeful feeling went up inside him, and he wanted to stamp it out and smash it away.

_Think of the what-ifs, and don’t get your hopes up. This won't end well. You should push him away, let him go before he gets hurt; he’s probably lying to make you feel better; he probably endured you. He’ll end up dead if you carry on like this and you know it, you know it, and you don't care, you don't—_

“I work, Harry." Draco's voice interrupted the spiralling thoughts. "I’m up at five, I run, I work twelve, fourteen-hour days," Draco spoke evenly, returning to an even keel. "Every weekday but Thursday, I’m doing research in the lab well into the evening, and Saturdays are for my thesis. I have to work to live, I can’t—there’s close to nothing left in the bank. Enough to get by, but I’ll graduate in debt, and that’s fine, it is, really, but I need this job. When I’m not in the apothecary, I’m in the library, and if I'm not there, I'm in the lab, and on my off days, I have classes at the studio—"

“What studio?”

“The dance studio,” Draco said. Harry had a hundred questions just about that, but Draco kept on, “and there’s my mum, who I see when I can, and on occasion, I actually manage to pick up the flat or buy groceries or remember to do laundry—god knows I barely keep my plants alive. And if I'm fortunate, maybe once a month I have dinner with one of my two friends—and then there’s you." He sighed, wrapping a long tendril of hair that had fallen into one eye behind his ear. "That’s all, that’s my life. My neat, little life before you came along.”

He snorted, his weird little laugh at a remembered fact.

“Last week, I saw you more hours than I slept. It’s just you, pet. It's only you.”

Harry sat with that, and when he spoke again, the room was so quiet that he could hear the ticking of the clock from down the hallway. He knew he would regret this moment, but with Draco in his arms, fragile and open, he went with what he wanted, more than anything, rather than with what was safe.

“You know what I want? I want dinner with you. I want to know how your day went, and what you do for fun, and for you to teach me how to inventory a manor—"

"Firstly, this is a house, not a manor," Draco corrected.

"Yeah, okay, a house, whatever," he said. Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, on the verge of arguing that that wasn't what he'd meant, and then he just blew out his breath and let it go. Sometimes, Draco was absolutely insufferable—and yet. Harry was pretty sure that he wouldn't have him any other way. "The point is that I want to get to know you. To admit that maybe this isn't just transactional, because it sure as fuck doesn't feel that way to me."

He swallowed against the lump in his throat, threading their fingers together. "If I'm truthful, it never was."

"You've been fibbing all this while?" Draco asked. He sat up and regarded Harry, who was glad beyond belief to see that his unshed tears were gone, and he looked—worn, but hopeful.

Harry smiled, embarrassed. "You see? I can lie when I think it's important," and he could see how Draco read into that, how a smile curved his lips, to hear that Harry thought that _he_ was important, and how fucking sick was it that Harry had strung him along and let him believe that he was anything other than extraordinary?

"It's always been something for me, Draco, and if I'm being totally honest, it's always kind of been you, hasn't it? I've always been—"

"Obsessed," Draco whispered, and Harry smiled wider, though his throat scratched. How was it that Draco dragged so many _feelings_ out of him?

"Yeah," he said gruffly. "Maybe a bit obsessed with you."

"Who wouldn't be?" Draco said, with a smidge of self-deprecation. "I'm splendid. I've been telling people this for years."

"I'm not joking," Harry said, and he held his eyes this time. "I'm serious. You're amazing."

Draco shook his head, suddenly demure. "Sure, if you've got a thing for disfigured, emotionally unstable war criminals—"

"Stop it—no, really, you've got to stop that!" Harry caught Draco by the chin and forced him to look at him. "You're smart and hard-working, and you're so stunning that I can hardly look at you most days without forgetting what I was going to say."

"You're one to talk," Draco grumbled, but Harry shushed him, and for once, he didn't argue.

"You're incredible, and I get a fraction of you." His throat was scratchy and closing up, but he needed to push these words out before they were caught inside him. "And I want so much more, Draco. I’ll take whatever I can get, but to be honest, I want all of it. "

Draco frowned again. _Prickly thing,_ Harry thought _, how many fucking layers of armour does he have on?_

"That's rich. You get a fraction of _me?"_ He scoffed. "Dragging a sentence about how you feel out of you is about as easy as fighting a fucking hippogryph blindfolded."

"And I'm sorry!" The words came out loud, rawer than Harry meant them to be. "I'm sorry that I'm like—this. It's just—we never talk about the things that really matter, but I think I'd like that." He traced the burned skin from Draco's wrist to his elbow. "I want to try, Draco. I want to be better."

 _For you_ , he thought, cowardice finally taking over and stealing the words from his lips. _I'd try anything for you_.

Harry stared down at where their hands were joined, and he squeezed, holding tightly. "I want you to call me Harry."

Draco tried to pull his hand away, but Harry held fast. "That's it," he said, his thumb gently brushing over Draco's knuckles. He had to push the words out even when they felt like knives in his throat. "That's what I want."

Draco didn't say anything for a while.

“You want to get to know me," he said at length, pulling up tufts of fabric only to collapse them with a loose fist.

"Yeah," Harry said. He felt ragged. "And I want you to get to know me."

"You don't make it easy," Draco said. Harry tipped his head.

"Fair. I'm not the most...open. I'm not any good at sharing what I'm thinking or feeling. But I want to try."

"Yeah?" Draco asked. Harry nodded, reaching out to brush his fingertips along the sharp edge of Draco's jaw.

"You say things, sometimes, the things you believed about me when we were kids, and they're not true.” It was Draco's turn to shrug as Harry sidled up close to plant another kiss at his shoulder. "You’d know that if you’d read the whole book. I know how fast you read."

“Bit hard to prioritize your book when I’ve got a couple hundred pages of advanced potions proofs to get through weekly. You'd know that if you ever asked me about how my life was going, outside of my ability to bring you off.”

He spoke icily, but then kissed Harry’s shoulder in return.

"I'm working on it. You've become my light reading.”

“I anxiously await your review,” Harry said.

Draco hummed. "I don't believe a lot of the shite I say anymore,” he said after a long pause. "Sometimes, I say things just to see you hurt. Old habit."

“I’ve gathered as much," Harry said.

“I’m sorry for it,” Draco said and sighed, as though he exhausted himself.

"It's alright," Harry said. "We're good at fighting, you and I. It's kind of our thing."

Draco smiled wanly.

"You do know that you have the self-defence mechanisms of a crab, don’t you?" Harry asked.

"Basically." Draco frowned. "Which is interesting because I'm a Gemini, not a Cancer."

"Trust me, I can tell," Harry said. When Draco gave him a raised eyebrow, Harry added, "You've clearly never tried to have sex with yourself, but let me tell you, it's about half talking."

The snaggletoothed grin this comment elicited lit a flame in Harry’s chest like nothing else, and _Christ_ , Harry was fucked. Had been since the café. Since the Ministry. Since the very beginning.

"It's not right for me to get possessive of you," Harry said. He grit his teeth, trying to parse out how to turn his feelings into words that he could live with.

"You can do whatever you want, under our terms. See who you want. And I, er," he struggled to find the words. They'd cost him to say because he didn't believe them, but he knew he owed them to Draco. "I know it's silly of me to want us to pretend at being, you know, monogamous or anything."

"Why is that silly?" Draco asked. He hadn't pulled his hand from Harry's grasp, and so when Harry didn't answer, he squeezed it tightly to get him to look at him. "Tell me, pet. Why is that silly?"

"In terms of our, erm." Harry could feel a flush rising. "With what this is. I couldn't ask—"

"Have I taught you nothing? If you want it, ask," Draco said.

"Could we try not seeing other people?"

Draco growled at the ceiling, his head dropping back between his shoulders. "That's the _stupidest_ way to phrase that—"

“Answer the question," Harry said.

"Yes. I'd like that."

“Okay,” Harry nodded, thinking it through. “We could try for dinners too, sometimes. And, I—I’d like it if you would stay the night."

“Mmm,” Draco made a considering noise. “I’ll allow it. You may feed me more often,” he said. Harry burst out laughing.

"You sound like you're doing me a favour," he said.

"Well, I am, basically,” he bumped their shoulders together. "We'll see about sleeping over. You have to replace your sheets first; if that’s to happen, this cotton would be a disaster on my hair. Pima or nothing, and that’s a line I refuse to cross.” Draco licked his lips, looking about the room. “You could come round mine, too, you know," he said, and Harry winced, a sharp jab of the hurt behind those words sticking him in the stomach.

"I want to come by yours, I really do. I was stupid. I didn't want to let on how much I liked you."

Draco beamed at his words, joy clear in his expression. Harry drank in that look, though it was tempered by bittersweetness.

 _Memorize this moment_ , he thought, because it was sure only to be a brief second where he could admit his care to someone new and enjoy a slip of time before they left him or were ripped from him, one way or another. Looking at Draco, looking at him like _that_ —radiantly happy—the ticking from down the hall became a clock, tick, tick, ticking in his mind, and he was reminded that he needed to be ready to someday, likely soon—say goodbye.

_I already miss you._

"And perhaps you could tell your friends that I—" Draco stumbled on the words, looking around the room. “Um, that we—"

"That you're my friend too?" Harry supplied gently.

"Yes. Alright."

"But this—us. This we keep secret, yeah?" Harry glanced up at Draco. He responded with a nod.

"Yes. It's better this way. Don't want to go fucking up things at work or," he covered his face with his hands and laughed coldly, "gods, the idea of telling my mother that I'm seeing you."

"Would you introduce me as pet?"

Draco giggled, bit his lip. The look he gave when he looked up stole Harry's breath properly away.

"No. I'll call you Harry. Though," he gave a devious smile, "you're still my pet."

"Okay," Harry agreed. "Deal. To...whatever this is."

"To whatever this is," Draco leaned in, sealing it with a kiss.

"Now, if I remember correctly, you were very helpfully touching my cock just a few minutes ago," Harry said as he leaned away.

"Is this how you ask for make-up sex? Because if so, it's atrocious, and I take everything back," Draco said the words even as Harry crawled over to him, kissing his hair, his ear, making him shiver as he pressed him back into the mussed sheets.

"I want out," Draco squirmed, "I was momentarily incapacitated by the incredible orgasm I had about a half-hour ago, and my brain was in a fog. I'll testify in the high court that I did not have my usual faculties or wits about me—"

"Draco," Harry said, "darling. Please do shut up."

* * *

**Notes** : 18k just has a nice ring to it, I suppose? Anyway, this chap is EARLY, which sets us up nicely for the Halloween chap to come out... _around_ Halloween. No promises, but I'm doing my best to wrap up one more chapter for you folks in time for my favourite holiday.

Happy reading! I love to read your comments (they're the only emails I get that I'm genuinely excited to answer), and kudos let me know you were here.

Title taken from Damien Rice's classic "Delicate".

xx


	11. Lover of Endymion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halloween day and night.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Disassociation

* * *

**Friday, October 31, 2003 | Halloween**

Pansy Parkinson smelled of clove cigarettes and stale tequila, and Harry was exactly hungover enough for the combination to be lethal. He swallowed bile and grimaced, attempted to stand straight and contain his nausea as she tapped her wand along the hem of his garment, needles piercing the fabric in tight circles.

"How long is this going to take?" he asked, voice tight.

"Not so long," she answered. He took a deep breath and resumed staring into the mirror hanging on the wall opposite. The jagged scar on his forehead stood out more than it usually did, dark against the pallor of his paling skin. The radiance of summer was gone, and with it, most of his tan. The effect was startling, his eyes glimmering green as fresh shoots of grass.

_It'll be good for the pictures, your scar standing out so strong. Barnabus and Victoria will be fucking thrilled._

He had to be careful not to snap. His silence in the face of Pansy's smell had been bought by two articles—both negative—that had been published in the last week. 

The first was a blind item from an unnamed source at Bagman's party, basically citing without naming him that he'd left the party early and staggering. The source was quoted as saying it was a well-known fact that he brushed his teeth with Blishens whisky in the mornings. This was a half-truth—he detested Blishens—but landed close enough to home that Victoria had warned him off being seen with so much as a single drink with supper through New Year's eve. This was not going to happen, as Harry continued his habit of drinking as much as it took to pass out any night that didn't involve Draco, but it didn't stop him from being sore about having to hide it slightly better than he had been. 

The second article was a gossip piece linking him romantically to a few prospects. All duds, in his mind. The first was Blaise Zabini, a man he hadn't seen since school and who was, by all accounts, very married and thoroughly straight. Next was the son of the Swedish Minister of Magic, whom he'd run into a couple of times. He had wonky teeth and the kind of personality so boring that Harry's thoughts buzzed loudly whenever he spoke so that Harry never really heard him speak at all. Apparently, he had been Harry's secret lover and bedmate when the Quidditch Cup had been held in Melbourne the year previous, which was a flat out fallacy. And last was Justin Finch-Fletchley, the person whom Harry had apparently already gone on several clandestine dates with and was considering taking on a ski-holiday over Christmas hols. That they'd been seen together at the Flourish & Blotts event and then afterwards, at his cousin's pub, was mentioned, as though nobody else in their party had been there.

It was all bullshit, but it also signalled a growing pressure to conform. He could be single and seen as celibate or linked romantically to someone.

"One, Harry," Victoria had loaded the word with meaning. "Pick someone, anyone, and give the public what they want. It can be a completely managed relationship, too."

"What does that mean?"

She'd sighed. "It means that it doesn't have to be real. A marriage of convenience, if you will. All I'm saying is that it won't do for you to be single forever."

"And why is that, Victoria?" he'd asked, the headache characteristic of their meetings settling in behind his eye.

She'd given him a pained look, as though explaining something to a dim-witted child. "Because if Harry Potter can't get a date, dear, what hope does that give the rest of us?"

"A minute more," Pansy said. She flashed a concerned look at Harry, eyebrows pulled downwards into Nike swoops of discontent. Harry shifted his weight and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the hot flash spreading across his back.

"Are you...are you alright?"

He opened his eyes to Pansy, frowning at him. The needles had stopped moving; she hadn't noticed. 

"Do I not look alright?" he asked. It came out tetchy. He was losing the battle with himself, and this was only his first appointment of the day.

"Honestly? No, you look like my cat's sick twice warmed over."

They stared at each other, and then Harry snorted. "Wow, Parkinson. Incredible customer service, you've got going here. Nothing quite like being told you look like shit on a day that you're expecting to be photographed extensively."

Pansy coloured as a look of horror overtook her face. 

"Oh god, I'm so sorry," she started. Harry reached out and touched her shoulder, forcing himself to soften his tone.

"Look, Parkinson, I know I look like shit today. Between you and me, I'm so hungover I might properly die before this ball tonight." They shared nervous smiles. "If you would, a cooling charm and a glass of water would really put me to rights."

Pansy's look of fear lessened as she nodded. "Of course," she said, casting a perfunctory cooling charm before transfiguring a bobbin into a goblet and filling it with water, passing it to him. The cool tin was a blessing against his sweating palms.

"That bad, eh? Hangover Cure not cutting it for you?"

Harry sipped the water, shook his head. "Don't keep it in the house anymore. Seems to incentivize the, er, drinking." 

_What are you doing? What are you—are you even thinking?_

It dawned on Harry that he was talking about his excessive drinking with Pansy Parkinson, precisely the sort of person and topic of conversation he was explicitly not supposed to be having.

She turned and walked away behind the counter, huffing. "Honestly, Gryffindors! It like they beat you all with the self-aggrandizing idiot stick. Here, take these."

She returned to rattle a few teal-coloured pills from a bottle into Harry's palm. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she shook the bottle in his face.

"It's Hangover Cure, arsehole. I'm not trying to poison you at my place of work. I'm rather over the whole rivalry thing, I'll have you know." Harry knocked the pills back. The feeling of nausea rose to a fever pitch as the pain in his brain sharpened to a pick-axe point behind his left eye, so badly that he had to cover his mouth with a hand. Just as suddenly, the feeling seeped away. Other than a bit sweaty and overly cold, he suddenly felt fine.

"They do them in pill-form now, which you'd know if you'd bought any in the last six months," Pansy continued. When she chanced a look at Harry again, he gave her a small smile.

"Thanks, Parkinson. I needed someone reasonable to make me do that this morning. Have you, erm, any plans for tonight?"

Pansy went back to work on his hems, shortening those at his wrists. She stood back to look at the costume's overall effect and then came forwards again, tugging at one arm, sending needles here or there to adjust a fastener or add a flurry of feathers to another patch. She spoke while working, squinting at the details.

"I do, actually. Dragging an old friend out to a party. It might even be pleasant if I could convince him to have fun for half a bloody minute of his miserly life," she grumbled. Harry made a non-commital sound as the possibility of what she might be referring to occurred to him.

"Who's that?" he asked. He hoped it sounded like he didn't care—polite rather than digging. A tiny alarm bell was going off in his mind. 

_She mentioned poisoning; she could know about you two. About the first night. Maybe he's confessed our whole sordid tale to her. Maybe she knows a lot more than she's letting on. Careful, now._

"Another of your favourites. It's Malfoy," she said. Harry raised an eyebrow. He prayed that his faux-surprise passed the sniff test. 

"Oh," he said. "I ran into him this summer at a party in London."

It was Pansy's turned to look surprised. "Really? Didn't eviscerate each other on the dance floor?"

Harry smirked. "There was a fair bit of shouting, I'll give you that. But we, uh, came to terms. Figured it was a touch childish to draw wands and duel every time we ran into each other."

"This summer, you say," Pansy said, humming to herself. "Sounds about right, him leaving the house for his quarterly allotment of a good time."

Harry let out a breath, relaxed his shoulders. If she did know about him and Draco, she was an excellent actress, and he couldn't tell. She stepped back and sent the last of the pins and needles flying into a red velvet pincushion with a vicious flick of her wrist.

"All done," she said. Harry shrugged out of the long cape, and she took it from him, swishing her wand over the fabric to set it to folding itself up.

"Er, thanks," Harry said, waiting in quiet as she packaged up his purchases. He was treading dangerous ground, prying like this, but he itched to know what Draco was up to. After the recent promise of more—more dinners, more time—they'd both been too busy to see each other for more than rushed encounters over the past week. 

There had been the rendezvous at the Harpies game on Tuesday night, with barely enough time to take their flies down and pull each other off, the air muggy under Harry's invisibility cloak while they quietly whispered filth to one another in the back of an unused box. That, and Draco coming over late Friday, practically vibrating with anger over a series of slights by the potions master he apprenticed under. 

"Fucking Simmons," he'd ranted, "the shite I put up with. You know that he has me using titration methods to quantify the infectious viral titer of these things that can _kill everyone in the Ministry_ if they were to get out, with no proper safety protocols in place!"

"Mmm." Harry had learned that sounds worked better than words when Draco was incensed. He nodded and tried his best to look as if he knew what half of the words that were coming from his mouth meant as Draco raged on, unaware of Harry's hands travelling beneath his shirt and into the waistband of his trousers, slowly divesting him of his work clothes.

"And don't even get me started on the fact that Muggles have proven methods to speed up the process using laser force cytology—" 

"Mmm, yes, cytology."

Harry took to his knees and nosed at his cock through his pants until he'd stopped complaining about Simmons and started complaining about how slow things were going where Harry's mouth wrapping around his prick was concerned. Draco tried to rush things along, and in return, Harry gave him the slowest blowjob of his life. The night had ended with Draco bent over, their fingers twined together as Harry fucked him into the edge of the dining room table.

"I've got to go," Draco said, catching his breath. "Sunday?"

"Saturday, if I can swing it," Harry replied. 

"Saturday," Draco replied, planting a kiss to Harry's eyelids and leaving with the weary smile Harry was fast becoming used to seeing.

"So, where's the party tonight?" Harry asked Pansy as she stuffed accessories into his bag. She gave him an arch look, the cat-eye liner on one side of her face rising dangerously high.

"Ooh, is Harry Potter looking to skive off from the charity ball for a party with the bad kids?" A devious smile spread on her face. "It's at Gollybean, that mixed club. Gay club, actually." She bit her lip, her lipstick remaining incredibly in place. Charmed that way, Harry was sure. 

"Oh?" he said.

"They're doing a masquerade. Might run a bit risqué for your tastes."

It was Harry's turn to gloat as he took his bag from her. "Another masquerade at Gollybean? I've wanted a do-over ever since my first one got cut short."

Pansy pursed her lips momentarily, which Harry figured was as close as he'd get to the admittance of cool from a Slytherin. 

"They have one every month. Hidden identities are helpful in a small community, I think," she said.

"Smart. Maybe I'll see you there later. Just do me a favour and don't tell the papers." Harry imagined what Victoria would say if she were there and cringed. "Actually, don't tell anyone. Whatever they offer to pay you, I'll pay double."

"Are you actually skiving off the ball, Potter?" Pansy pretended boredom but was obviously intrigued. "Fatima will be rightly pissed if a shot of this costume doesn't end up in _Witch Weekly_."

"Maybe I'll double-up on parties tonight. But first, duty calls." Harry winked at Pansy, just to see the look of shock freeze her features. "Send Fatima my love," he added as he slipped out of the shop. He was in such a plucky mood that he wasn't bothered in the least by the press that swarmed him on his way to the Apparition point at the north end of the street. Well, he pretended he wasn't, and that was a good as the real thing to him, sometimes. 

* * *

Harry was tired of all the clapping, but with so many eyes on him, he didn't dare show it. He kept his gaze trained high as the ghosts of Hogwarts castle bled from the walls to complete another turn above the Great Hall tables in their yearly formation gliding showcase. As they finished, he tried clapping into his non-dominant hand, hard enough that his palms stung. He clapped harder.

"Delightful, isn't it?" Justin spoke into his ear. He leaned in each time he did it, for show—it wasn't so loud that Harry couldn't hear him, and he didn't need to speak so quietly. They had no secrets, though apparently, he had reason to make other people believe that they did. Harry watched his icy-blue eyes dart down to his mouth. The want in his face was obvious.

"Yes," Harry said, grinning out towards all the students, "delightful." He smiled nice and wide so that the teachers at the table, and the press, and the dignitaries and alumni, so that the whole world could see him smiling. He was in so much pain it burned his insides, but outwardly, he gleamed.

His participation at the Hogwarts Halloween feast had been cemented as tradition the first year post-war that he'd returned. At that time, the orange streamers, floating candles, and flagons of pumpkin juice had been a much-needed antidote to the castle's daily gloom for the students and staff. They'd desperately needed to put behind the darkness of all the death that had occurred on the grounds aside for a night and have a little fun while reconstruction was still underway. The Weird Sisters heard that Harry was joining for the festivities and offered to play for free. Word spread, and McGonagall was soon looking down through her pince-nez as a crowd in the hundreds flooded the Great Hall, turning the feast into an all-out party.

In the years since, attendance had become streamlined, with tickets sold in tiers based on access to Harry. The money went towards his charity and a fund for current and future Hogwarts students in need of support. There was a meet-and-greet in a room off the back and a photoshoot for those who purchased top-tier tickets, which ran into the hundreds of Galleons. 

McGonagall started to give her speech, and Harry fingered a note in his pocket. It was the fifth anniversary of the Battle, and he didn't have it in him to pay attention to her speech. It was easier to appear stoic by not listening at all—he didn't want to hear the names rattled off and be sent back into those memories that haunted him nightly, anyways. 

He couldn't recall exactly when he'd started the habit of writing notes, but the scraps of paper had started to accumulate—in pockets, and the bottom of his laundry hamper, lumped in with lint and loose gum and his keys in the bowl in the entranceway. 

In the beginning, he'd throw them out without a second glance. Lately, he'd read them and, more often than not, be unable to recollect writing them at all. They filled the time in-between obligations and were full of things he wished he could write to Draco—words that went beyond the stark numerals of their enchanted Galleons. 

_Let's make carbonara tonight. Luna might drop in. What do you think?_

He scratched them when bored in an investor meeting or sitting around with a napkin tucked into the neck of his dress-shirt, waiting for the make-up for a photoshoot to set. 

_It was torture to sit through the Minister's speech this morning; I was so raw from your stubble. I kind of love it. More tonight?_

They were never addressed or signed; the imaginings of what could be—requests, hopes, filthy dreams. 

_Wear that grey tie I like, and you can string me to the headboard with it later._

He asked to be rimmed until he screamed. To have his hair pulled and be taken on all fours in front of the living room window, where anyone could see them. Voyeurism was a common theme, though it was often of the mundane variety: for Draco to meet him for shopping in Diagon Alley or dinner in Hogsmeade, where magical folk would definitely notice. 

There'd been a turning point where he decided to collect them instead of binning them, and now whenever he came across one, he tucked it with the rest of them under a loose flagstone on the hearth in the kitchen. He liked that Draco stepped over his secrets every time he entered the house, lately. One day, Harry fantasized that he would share them all, a bouquet of his desires. 

That was for one day, though. A someday that probably would never come, but who could see the future, right?

"Marvellous costume, Potter. Are you a crow?" McGonagall asked as she escorted him away from the head table. He had the uncanny feeling, as though the record he'd been listening to had skipped a song—she'd only just been giving her speech, and now it was over, and they were walking and talking. He could only gulp and smile, pretend that nothing was amiss, and pray that he hadn't done anything strange in the interim.

 _Focus, you're in public, for fucks sakes._

She beckoned him into the side room and beyond the magically enhanced stanchions in place to keep some of his more rabid fans from jumping the line and taking a run for him. The placid look on her face brooked no animosity—she wasn't displeased with him, so he mustn't have done anything too terrible during the blank space in his memory.

"I'm a raven," he corrected gently, "and thank you, Headmaster."

"A raven," she said appreciatively. "Well-chosen. Your choice?"

"Er, a friend's suggestion," Harry said. A flash of remembrance of Draco scoffing at him for not having chosen a costume yet earlier that week, and the way his eyes raked over Harry's body as he told him that he was going as a raven this year, no fuss. 

"Your costume is lovely, as well," he added.

McGonagall didn't blink an eye at his flattery. "This? I've gone as a cat four years running, Potter; you're too kind. And when will you listen and start calling me Minerva? You're on the board for crying out loud, not a student anymore."

"When the Fat Lady sings, I suspect," Harry said, a smile tugging at his lips. "I don't much go by the Gryffindor common room anymore, though, so it might be a while before I run into her again."

"Cheek, always cheek with you," she muttered. She gave him an affectionate tap on his hand as he straightened up, shaking the long cloak of oily black feathers to settle better across his shoulders. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," he replied, practiced smile falling into place.

* * *

When Justin motioned for Harry to follow him into his office with a curl of a single finger, it annoyed Harry more than it should have. He was pointy and raw, not to mention sober, and enormously tired of socializing. He'd been molested by the needs of fans and cast adrift in turns, left totally alone as the wizard rock-band booked for the event played their set. He didn't have any real friends in attendance, and Justin had to mind the younger years, so he kept his chin up and vision blurred, his preferred method to lessen the burning sensation of hundreds of sets of eyes watching him sway along, alone in a crowd, to the music. 

"You look like you could use a drink," he said. Harry shut the door and took a seat, jaw set closed as a vice. He made a sound and hoped that his face was more a smile than a grimace as Justin summoned glasses and pulled a bottle of something amber from his desk. 

It was nearly midnight, and the party was winding down, giving Harry the chance to slip out of the Great Hall on the falsehood that he was popping to the loo. He'd prowled around for a specific hallway, one that he hadn't visited in over a decade, and of course, Justin had to get in the way of his searching.

"What are you doing, wandering down here? Not much down these hallways but the teachers' chambers," Justin asked. He was pretending not to care, but Harry could see right through him. 

_He's been watching you all night. If anything, he saw you leaving the Great Hall and followed you. He probably took a shortcut to be able to draw you in here,_ Harry thought. Justin shucked his outer robes, dropping them over the back of the sofa, and popped the button at his collar.

He was evident in his wants. Obvious in a way that made Harry want to scoff and say _enough_ , but he couldn't. 

_Can't you, though? Can't you tell him off, make it clear that you're not interested? Or are you too much the coward to do it?_

Harry took the glass of something from him and necked it.

"Thanks," he said. He didn't offer a reason for his wandering. As he passed the glass back to Justin, their fingers brushed. Harry wanted to scream at the obviousness of it. Justin refilled it and held on to the glass a second too long, staring in its depths as though he wanted to say more before he passed it back. 

Harry seethed. The way Justin thought he was smooth, that the fire in the grate was lit just so, the light a dusky glow, the way he sat back in his leather chair and widened his legs, he—

"Silly article," Justin said. He sipped at his own drink. Harry couldn't recognize what it had been. All he tasted was heat.

"Which one's that?" Harry heard himself ask the question. He gulped half of his second drink and put it down. Justin couldn't be trusted to keep it to himself if Harry got drunk in his presence.

"The one insinuating you have a drinking problem. You drink just the same as all of us. Such an irresponsible thing for them to print. The gall," he said. Harry tipped his head as though in agreement.

"All through dinner tonight, not a drop! And I'm sure the Prophet will still print what they want about it. That's why I figured you could use brandy, after all that fuss with the public." He drew out the word 'public' like it was dirty, gave Harry a knowing look.

"It's not so bad as all that," Harry said. He had to get out. He couldn't stand it, wanted out from playing pretend. He wasn't on an even keel. He wasn't alright; he didn't want to be here, drinking with Justin; didn't want to be in this castle, thinking about dead things; didn't want to be praised by people who thought he was good and sweet and something close to holy when they didn't _know_ him, didn't know the dead thing they worshipped was a shell, was a farce, was a liar. And Justin, so sure that he had Harry wrapped around his little finger. The way he sounded just like Draco used to, as though the peons of the world were beneath him. So smooth, he would simper and weasel his way in any way he could.

"Well, when you're around and need a place of refuge, I'm right here," Justin said. Harry rose. He had been headed somewhere before he was sidetracked. 

It was a fruitless search, as the castle had changed so much. 

_You know you're never going to find them,_ he thought. _Why are you searching for what you know you won't find? They closed the old passageways._

Before tonight, he had known that it would be difficult to retrace forgotten steps; he'd been one of the people who'd put the new wards put in place to keep the students safe, after all. 

_Considerably more protected than you ever were when you were a student_. 

His thoughts turned to Dumbledore, and as he reached the doorway, he had the simultaneous urge to cry and punch the wall. The sweet and sharp tang of alcohol on his tongue; that was safe, that, he needed more of.

"Before you go," Justin reached out and touched his elbow. 

"What?" Harry recoiled. Justin pretended nothing had happened. Perhaps he didn't notice.

"I was only going to say that Ginny and Nev have a Portkey booked for Sweden. Some of the other couples are going, and they're trying to confirm numbers to get a chalet. It's still about a month away, but with your schedule, I—well." Justin looked down and away. His eyelashes fluttered. Harry wondered if it was on purpose, him trying to seem coy. As though that's what he thought Harry wanted. 

"I wanted to see if you'd care to join? Otherwise, I'd be the odd duck out, so to speak. They asked me whether I'd like to bring someone along, and I thought of you."

"Mmm," Harry said. 

"I think they thought it would be weird if they asked you—I think everyone wants you on. Would you—yeah? Are you in?"

"Sure. Sounds great." He bit his tongue. "Let me know the dates."

The last thing he saw before he fled was Justin's dazzling smile, handsome face a picture of glee. He liked Harry, and Harry was performing according to his wants, and Harry was ever so good at being what people needed, wasn't he? 

"I'll tell them the good news," he called at Harry's back. "Love the crow costume, by the way! See you soon, Potter! Don't be a stranger!"

Harry had tears in his eyes as he walked down the hall but blinked them back by the time he found his way to a working Floo. He fumbled with the mask to complete his costume, pulling it from a deep pocket and tying it on with a charm, then plastered his working smile back in place and waved goodbye. People rushed him, and he hugged some of the lingering teachers even though his skin was crawling, and took a few last pictures with fawning first-years, and then at last, at last, made it to the fireplace. This was what had to keep the balance, to keep everyone happy. Everyone would be fine, even if he wasn't.

* * *

When Harry saw Draco, it was as though he were a lighthouse, his brightness shining in bursts through a sea of mottled darkness.

It was very, very late, and Harry had been at the club so long that he had already given up on finding Pansy and Draco. He figured that if they'd even shown up at all, they must have left before he got there, but then he turned the corner and suddenly, there he was.

Draco was a vision in white, hair falling in soft waves, crimped in a flapper's style. A column of iridescence in elbow-length white gloves with fingers pointed towards the heavens, he danced with no-one in particular though many surrounded him, his eyes half-lidded behind a mask of mother-of-pearl. His mouth was a crimson dream, the little dip of the cupids bow glistening with sweat, and Harry was so glad his lipstick was perfect, clearly unmarred by the lips of anyone else—Draco's sweat was Harry's to lap up, after all. His thin shoulders, light as a sparrows bones were framed by the spaghetti straps of the chemise he wore, tucked into the high-waist of white silk trousers, nipped and then flowing out, billowing almost as a skirt would, and fuck but he was gorgeous—a nymph, an androgynous dream swaying to house music, alone but right at home, dancing on his own.

Harry moved towards him like a moth to a flame, cursing his own idiocy in not having recognized him when they had met again all those months ago within the same walls. He'd thought his eyes were blue, a trick of the light, the product of not paying close enough attention. At that moment, dancing, they had been reborn as versions of themselves that didn't have histories, only possibilities. How could he have seen this angel on the dance floor and had anything but _Draco_ course through his veins?

"Pet," he said, eyes lighting up as he recognized Harry on his approach. His smile was short-lived. "What are you doing here?"

"Take me home," the words tumbled out as Harry crashed into him, hands gripping Draco's waist. Even in the club's humid heat where each breath felt heavy with moisture, Draco's silk shirt was cool to the touch. As his now-familiar smell filled his nostrils, Harry could weep.

Someone bumped into him from behind, and he stumbled. Draco's fingers dug into Harry's arms as he held him up. Harry hoped he'd bruise.

"Pet," he said again, his voice tinged with worry, "you're drunk. Are you alright?"

"Take me home, please. Is Pansy here?" Harry asked the question without thinking much about it, though now he'd shown his hand.

He swayed, and Draco's fingers pressed harder into him. There would be so many mysterious bruises to count tomorrow. Harry wanted more.

"She's doing alarmingly well," Draco said. He jut his chin over to the corner of the room, and Harry's eyes followed until he made her out. Her black hair was laced with green, tendrils of ivy woven through it and over the shoulders of the pale woman in her grasp. They were kissing with a ferocity that impacted their ability to notice anything going on in the vicinity.

Harry snapped his attention back to Draco. The joviality had gone out of his eyes. They were cold, the pebble-grey with nothing to share.

"We can go, let's go," Draco said. He took Harry by the hand and led him through the crowd, pushing him up against a wall as he collected his jacket from coat check, leading him out through the front door. The night air was as bracing as a slap to the face and woke Harry up to the fact that he was stumbling drunk, unable to pick his way over the cracks in the pavement without Draco's firm grip. He steadied him as they waited in line in the alley for their turn to step behind the dumpster serving as the club's Apparition point.

"Let's go to yours," Harry mumbled. "I want to wake up in your bed tomorrow." Draco didn't say anything as they stepped up to the spot, grasping him close as he jumped them away.

"What's going on," Draco asked as they landed in his darkened flat. He snapped his fingers, and the sconces along the walls flared to life with a low electric glow. He stepped away from Harry to peel off his gloves, and Harry watched, transfixed as his pale hands untied the mask from his face. They'd landed in the entranceway to his flat, but he walked quickly over to the dining area. Harry looked forlornly at the front door. He'd still never entered through it. 

"Nothing's going on. I want you, I just want you," Harry said. He tossed his own mask carelessly on the counter, and it slid, the sound of it cracking on the tile of Draco's kitchen floor like a shot in the quiet of his flat.

Draco craned his head to look over at the broken bits of porcelain but didn't do anything about them. 

"Did something happen at the ball?"

The little line of worry cut in-between his eyebrows. 

Harry rolled his eyes and shrugged out of his cloak.

"Nothing's happened. Why is everyone so _worried_ about me all the time?" he mumbled. He leaned heavily on the wall behind him to toe out of his boots, then stumbled forwards, a fist around each arm of the chair Draco sat in. "I just want you. Take me to bed, Draco."

"I've half a mind to burn off the alcohol in your blood. You reek," Draco pushed Harry away with a finger as he tried to close the distance between them. Harry fell back to the wall, spread his arms wide like a starfish.

"Fine, then, do it. I don't care." Harry's voice sounded cold, even to his own ears. He was embarrassing himself but couldn't stop now. "Do it so you can bring me to bed."

Draco paused from pulling off his shoes to look at Harry. They were glittery boots, something exceptional that Harry hadn't seen before. "Are you sure about that? It's going to hurt."

Harry sneered. "I know that. I'll do it myself, look."

Before Harry's hand could re-emerge from his pocket with his wand, Draco drew his own, pointing it and calling out, " _Rivulis Vocatus!_ "

Harry screamed. He caught and held the last of the sound in his throat. The spell scorched his insides as the alcohol in his system combusted, but not without first setting his nerve endings aflame. He flicked his fingers out from the tight fists they'd made, holding back from letting a single tear escape.

"I said it would hurt. You shouldn't cast on yourself when you're inebriated," Draco said softly. His wand clattered as he dropped it to the table. 

Harry breathed heavily. In, out. 

"I know," Harry said. The pain was a flare, there and gone in an instant. He blinked again; his eyelashes were wet, but he wasn't crying. He wouldn't, couldn't, not in front of Draco. "I do it all the time."

Draco padded over to the kitchen's far side, avoiding the broken pieces of Harry's mask strewn on the floor. The better version of Harry, the one that worried and was good, he thought that he ought to be ashamed of himself as he watched Draco's stockinged feet tip-toe around the shards. Draco made it past the garden of broken pieces unscathed and hopped up to sit on the countertop, lighting a cigarette that he'd been hidden in his palm. One arm rested across his abdomen to prop up the other. Holding himself.

"What's gotten into you?" he asked.

Harry ignored the question. "Did you go as a Veela for Halloween? Bit weird, to go as a creature, don't you think?" The words were laced with derision that wasn't warranted. "You going in for the rights of Beings, and all." 

_Yeah, that's it. Push, push, push, and you can fight. He could hit you in your stupid mouth, and you'd deserve it._

It would be good to fight. It would be enough to drown out this other feeling, hot and viscous, turning his blood to black glop, robbing him of easy breaths. 

"Bit on the nose for you to go as a symbol of death, isn't it, zombie boy?" Draco retorted. He held himself very still, didn't flinch as Harry approached him. "Don't you think?"

Harry pulled the cigarette from his fingertips and puffed on it. The smoke filled him, brought dizziness into the mix. He liked it, maybe. Maybe just because it felt different.

"Is that what you think of me?" He exhaled, took another puff and held it. He craved more of anything, more than how he usually felt. "That I'm undead?"

"I've never given it much thought." Draco reached out and pushed his hair back, exposing the crooked scar so that he could swipe his thumb over it, from hairline to eyebrow. He was frowning, worry tingeing his lovely features. Harry felt guilt, ardent and acidic that he was the one making Draco look like that.

"As you're not going to ask," Draco added, looking at him curiously as he passed the cigarette back, "I'm Selene. The personification of the moon."

"Lover of Endymion," Harry said. Draco's eyebrows went up.

"You know your titans, then," he mused. Harry watched him pull on the cigarette and then took it and dropped it into the kitchen sink, flicking his fingers at the tap to turn the water on and off, the embers hissing as they died.

"I'm not the dunce you think I am," Harry said. Draco leaned in close. They both smelled like smoke now, but under it was Draco's smell, the joyous spray of orange oil. Harry wondered if Draco craved his smell. If he ever buried his nose in a pillow to drink it in the way Harry did when he left.

"You're not the dunce you lead other people to believe you are," Draco said. "I know you're not dull, pet. You play it to get away with shite you'd otherwise have to actually deal with. I'm becoming wise to your ways."

"Shut up," Harry said, but it was without resentment, and Draco closed his eyes and let himself be kissed. Talking wasn't what he wanted, and Draco wasn't taking his bait to fight. Fighting was so much easier than asking for what he wanted. He pulled him close, off the countertop.

"Here," he said, "legs up." Draco complied, tucking his feet into each other as he locked his thighs tightly around Harry's waist.

"Hold on," Harry said and Apparated them to Draco's bedroom. Draco kept his hands looped loosely around his neck even as he lowered to stand. His face was still as a mask, blank as he searched Harry's eyes for an answer.

Harry hadn't been in Draco's room before. The moon shone in through the window, illuminating the edges of things with a dim glow. It felt like a dream, maybe, his being here in this world gone black-and-white.

"What's gotten into you?" Draco asked again. 

Harry felt so much more exposed without the haze of alcohol, like the fire in his belly was visible. But the desire hadn't changed at all. 

"I want you," he said. 

"Alright. But you need to tell me what it is that you want."

"I don't know," Harry lied. 

Draco kissed his jaw, just under his ear. The place he knew he liked.

"What would you like me to do?" 

"I don't know," Harry said, pushing away. "I—Can you do the thinking for me?"

Draco took a step back, then another, leaving Harry bereft. 

"Kit off, up, on the bed. On your back, in the middle."

This was more like it. It was easier when it was all breath and tongue and teeth. In the dark, up close with no room for words and no space to see. Harry didn't want to have to use his words.

His stomach was full of churning stones. He hadn't felt fear like this in so long. _It's stupid, this feeling,_ he thought, particularly with Draco, who, for some reason, was patient with him. Draco, who was almost infinitely kind when it came to this. Who took it slow and told him what to do when it should probably be obvious.

Harry's hands shook as he freed the hem of his shirt and took it up and over his head. He forgot to undo the buttons at his neck and stopped, stuck. The sound of Draco's snort-laugh in the darkness reminded him that even now, he could laugh too.

"Eager, are we?" Draco drawled. The stones were tumbling ever harder, big rocks. Harry was thankful for the ribbing. 

"Shut it, Malfoy," he said, reverting to the name that always sounded like a curse in his mouth.

He pulled the shirt back down to fumble with its buttons, then removed his socks, then trousers and pants in one go. He crawled to the middle of Draco's bed, a size bigger than his mattress at home, and flipped onto his back, feet hanging loosely over the long edge. Draco watched him from an armchair in the corner of the room as he propped himself up on his elbows. He was half-hard, and his right hand went to his cock for a tug. A nervous tick to cover himself when he was naked. Draco was fuzzy in the dim light as the spell to correct his vision faded, but Harry could see he was smiling. A happy ghost with a crimson smile.

"You're really beautiful, pet." He sounded serious. "You know that, right?" 

Harry scoffed, wanted to cover everything. Face, body, scars, cock. Especially his cock. It rested thick now against his belly, aiming towards the nip of his waist as he felt a flush prickle up his neck. He wanted something hot and fast and barely memorable with Draco to kill the feelings he'd been fighting all day. He'd been looking for something more like a fight, not this.

"Why are you still dressed?" he asked, his voice cracking as it hadn't since the throes of puberty. 

Draco sucked his teeth and stepped closer to the bed.

"I asked you a question. You do know you're beautiful, right? Tell me that you know."

Harry hid his face in his shoulder. "What does it matter? I like looking at you a thousand times more than looking at myself in the mirror."

"Yes," Draco said, stepping to the edge of the bed, "but I much prefer looking at you. Say it. I want to hear you say the words. Say, _I'm beautiful_." 

Draco's shirt dropped to the floor, revealing the milk-white expanse of his chest. The scars that crisscrossed his torso—Harry had hardly ever touched them. He wanted them imprinted on him now, somehow; to know them in his memory, in the dark. Harry watched Draco's hands open his belt, the button and fly. He hooked his thumbs into the loosened waist of his trousers and stopped. 

"You're beautiful," Harry said, and Draco shook his head as he pulled his trousers off, and Harry nearly swallowed his tongue. Under the billowing white fabric, he'd been wearing a jock, a white thong that barely contained his prick, the outline of it from root to crown clearly visible.

"Fuck," he breathed, and Draco stared him down, taking energy from Harry's open appreciation.

"Oh, you like?" He pulled it down and off, slowly, his cock bobbing out, fully hard. Harry's mouth flooded with how badly he wanted to taste it. Straight and pink, cut, the same colour as his palms. The difference from Harry's, heavy and with a thick, ruddy head hidden from view until it was coaxed out from under his foreskin, was as stark in contrast to each other as the rest of them.

"Lingerie makes an easy gift. I'm a twenty-seven waist, size small," he announced, and Harry huffed, the closest thing to a laugh he could manage. "You might want to buy me some considering your continued refusal to say two flipping words for me when asked. The cheek on you," Draco said, pushing Harry flat on his back as he climbed on top of him. Harry chuckled.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"You're not the first person to tell me off for cheek tonight," Harry answered. A shiver wracked his body as the white sheet of Draco's hair brushed his ear. 

"You understand it's an affront to my sense of taste that you won't agree with me," Draco said. He held himself up on all fours over Harry's body, far enough that when Harry bucked his hips up for some friction, all he hit was cold air. Draco raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.

"I'm not disagreeing. It's embarrassing to say stuff like that." Harry closed his eyes. "To have that much ego. I'm not like you."

"Well, I have great taste, and I fancy you, for whatever godforsaken reason," Draco said as he stroked Harry's hair back from his forehead, "so logic would have it follow that you're fit."

"If you say so," Harry managed to say before his breath was stolen from him as Draco lined up their cocks and rolled his hips, grinding his erection into Harry's own. He did it again, and again, and on and on until the only sounds in his ears were their twin inhales, sharp, and exhales, progressively longer.

Harry closed his eyes and succumbed to the overloading of his senses. The feeling was electric, every time. Suddenly Draco's fingers are at his lips, and when he was ordered to open up, he did without protest. Three fingers slipped inside, and he sucked at them greedily, moaning in happy satiation at the sensation of having any part of Draco in his mouth. 

"Good boy," Draco cooed, slipping the fingers out and then they were slicking the head of Harry's cock and his own. He busied himself with exploring Harry's throat, licking and kissing as his slippery fingers explored the width of their cocks held together, pumping in a leisurely rhythm. 

"Do you like that?" he asked.

Harry made a sound. He felt Draco's laugh more than he heard it, a rumble into his neck. 

"That's a yes, then," he muttered. His fist around their cocks moved steadily, and when the feeling was somewhere close to manageable, Harry opened his eyes and cast his gaze between their bodies. He was transfixed by the image of the red crown of his prick revealed on each downwards pull, held against Draco's, oozing precome enough to share. 

"Fuck," Draco muttered, his breath growing heavy as he watched too, "fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Here," Harry said. He brought Draco's hand up to suck his fingers into his mouth again and stretched the moan for Draco's benefit, charged by the salty taste of his precome on his tongue. Draco relished watching him do it, and he loved to perform under Draco's coaxing gaze.

"Would you like one of these fingers inside of you?" he proposed.

"Yes," Harry breathed. After all they'd done, naked and grunting, this was still enough to make his heart hammer with nervousness.

"How are you still so tight?" Draco said, frowning with his lip bit as he pushed in the first tentative digit. Harry quickly lost his grip on reality as that finger pressed inside of him, and it wasn't enough. Draco kept asking him what he wanted, and where— _"Where do you want that finger, pet?"_. He forced Harry to turn his sounds into words, so totally in control as Harry fell apart. 

Harry closed his eyes and tried to let it happen naturally, to—

_relax, pet_

—as he'd been told to so many times before, but it was dangerous to close his eyes and when he felt as he had all day. With his eyes closed, his body was like a container that things were done to. Push, pull, rub. Only with his eyes open could he associate the sensations as happening _to_ him. 

He looked, connected that it was Draco's tongue, lapping slow strokes on his cock, attached to his body. Draco's mouth sucking gently, Draco's teeth, even, gently pushing back the foreskin. 

_You're right here,_ he thought _, and it's Draco doing this with you. You're alive, and the year is two thousand and three, and you wanted this. You're awake, and he's real._

Draco, divinely unaware of the predicament he was in. As far as he knew, he was driving Harry absolutely mad with lust. He murmured encouragement as he slipped another finger inside, and when Harry looked at him through glazed eyes, he planted a red kiss to the inside of this thigh and smiled up at him, and it wasn't unusual when Harry closed his eyes and laid back instead of returning the smile, and for Harry, the return to someplace else left him feeling untethered—an empty vessel, a thing, and it wasn't enough. 

"More," Harry ground out. Draco muttered the preparation spells wandless, a new trick he'd taught himself, as he withdrew his fingers and spat at his hole in response, and Harry didn't feel that. When he opened his eyes and looked at the headboard, he noticed the grain—dark whorls and specks, unevenly stretched in long lines. 

_Like ants,_ his brain supplied, and a noise came from his throat because there were still senses drawn from his body, though his body and he weren't one and the same anymore. Draco worked his body into a frenzy, rimming it and then he used his fingers again, deeper, until he had three inside, and on the one hand, Harry was thinking of how good it would be to fall asleep, here, in Draco's bed, fingertips pressing into a woodgrain that he could not feel, and on the other hand, he distantly felt so full that he couldn't comprehend more, but it wasn't enough.

"Mmm, are you going to come for me, pet?" Draco asked. The breathing from Harry's body was ragged, gasping as Draco fucked his hand into him, the room filled with obscene squelching noises. Harry looked down and saw what was happening and connected, distantly that this was happening to _his_ body, and was terrified, that Draco would notice. 

_Look what he's doing, and you like this. Look at how much your body wants this, you want this, your slut body wants this_. He recoiled further from reality, fought from giving in to the temptation to rejoin it. He gripped the arm Draco was using to open him up to slow its movement. 

"Stop. I want you." The words tumbled out from someplace, sounding just like his own voice. Draco pulled his fingers free from the vice of Harry's arse. 

"You want me how?" He smiled, devilish, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "You have me right now, pet; I'm trying to—"

"I want your cock inside of me." The words came again, and Harry wasn't sure how they kept slipping out, or from where. 

_It's your whore mouth talking, of course_.

There was pressure in the body's mouth—teeth clamping down on a slimy, moving thing. Like a snake had crawled inside the body and tried to get out through the hole in its face.

_You would have a snake hiding inside of you, wouldn't you? That would happen—just a sack of rotting skin and bones; I bet you don't even have blood flowing in your veins. If you can't feel anything, you're not alive anymore, are you? You're probably halfway through the veil, with the others. This is how it feels to be an undead thing—_

"Oh," Draco said, looking stunned. "You don't—"

"That's what I want." 

_Would you look at that? The marionette speaks, and even it's a horrid little slag. Look how it wants; it takes. Greedy, awful thing, it's a wonder anyone's bothered getting this far with it._

Draco looked Harry's body in its eyes and found them dazed, but that wasn't unusual, and he squared his shoulders. Harry was impressed, distantly, with the body. It had to be brave if it was going to take the next step, but it couldn't feel anything— _he_ , wherever he was watching from, certainly couldn't feel anything—and he really, really did want to feel something. Something new and fiery. 

_Maybe if this hurts, I'll wake up._

He wondered if he would feel split open or if it would be good. If it was with Draco, he couldn't imagine it being anything but incredible.

"Alright," Draco said, nodding to himself, "alright, okay," he repeated, and Harry could tell that he was _nervous_ because he was going to try to make it good, and Harry wanted to reach out and pat his hand and tell him not to worry, that it didn't matter, it was just a dream-body, just a thing, but he couldn't move the body about anymore, so he didn't worry about it.

"Let's try like this," he said. They shuffled to the top of the bed, and Draco laid on top of the body and settled between its thighs. He propped up on his elbows and knees, as the body wrapped its legs around the backs of Draco's.

Draco bit his lip in concentration as he held his cock in one hand and lined himself up, slicking the cockhead between its legs, barely pressing there. He looked to the body's face for a reaction.

"Relax," Draco said, kissing its cheek, and Harry would laugh if he could, because why tell a thing in a dream to relax?

 _It's not real_ , he thought, watching as the Dream Draco whispered a lube spell—his were better than Harry's, lasted longer, probably even in the dream world—which pooled in his palm. The body couldn't relax, though. It seemed to tense up just as Harry did, as he listened to the squelching sound of Draco spreading the oil on his prick, slicking the excess at the entrance to the dream body, and Harry wished it wouldn't do that.

_Be good for him, goddamnit. You might never get to do this again. This probably won't happen in real life, so try now._

Harry was supposed to be drunk for this, so he could get it over with without the thoughts pushing in, but here they were. Panic rose inside of him like bile. 

He winced, and the body winced too, eyes screwed shut. When he blinked open again suddenly, he was back in his body, and all the sensations were there, redoubled from having been missing so long—the slippery feeling between his legs and the pressure of Draco's cock and the soft warmth of his breath against Harry's cheek. The rawness of his lips and the taste of the lipstick Draco wore, like crushed rose petals and candy. Where the bruise on his back throbbed from when he'd been pushed into the side table a week before, aching insistently now, and the sharp press of a hipbone into his flesh and it was so much that he wished for it to be a dream again, but as usual, his wish wasn't granted.

"There's no rush," Draco murmured, lining up once more and just barely pushing. Harry tensed up and gasped at the feeling, abruptly more intrusion than welcome. 

"We'll take it slow." 

Harry hadn't relaxed at all when he nodded and whispered, "Yeah, okay, more," and Draco thrust just a bit and then stilled, a frown on his face when he looked into Harry's. 

"It shouldn't hurt," Draco said as he tried to pull away, but Harry gripped him tightly in his arms.

"I can take it, though," he said, voice strained.

_Don't let on that you're insane, that you're broken. Pretend, just breathe and pretend and smile, you know how to smile and how to take it, so no one else has to—_

He pulled Draco further in by curling his legs and gasped. It burned, unlike any kind of burn he'd survived before. What felt like so much but was likely only a couple inches was dragged roughly inside, and he had the distinct thought of—

_so that's what tearing feels like_

_—_ and even that wasn't enough. They weren't nearly done.

"Harry, no—"

The stones in his stomach churned, and he felt sick with himself, for being this open, this vulnerable, what kind of a useless slag was he, literally flat on his back and—

"Harry, where are you? Stop," Draco said. 

This wasn't the same as three fingers, not at all. Draco tried to pull away, but Harry held him close with his legs. 

_If you go a little deeper, you'll have done it. Prove them right; you are a little freak, just a little faggot._ _It's not supposed to be nice for you_. 

If he could just get it over with and get fucked, hard, till it hurt, till he couldn't feel anymore—

"Harry, _stop_." A flash of pain jolted him, as though a hornet had crawled up and stung his face. He lost his grip, and Draco scrambled off of him to the bottom of the bed. 

"What the _fuck_ is going on?" 

Harry blinked, and the bruise wasn't throbbing anymore because he wasn't in the body at all; he was above it all and watching, could direct the body to do as it needed, but they weren't one and the same. Because though there'd been a tear, though his lip was pulsing, hot and bruised where Draco had bitten him, he couldn't feel anything at all.

"I'm serious. Harry, say something." The bed dipped; Draco must be crawling on it. 

"You're scaring me," he pleaded. 

"It's fine," Harry spoke to the ceiling. 

"For god's sake, will you please _look at me_." 

Harry dragged his eyes down to Draco's face and was surprised that his pale eyes were round discs. He was terrified—whether of or for Harry, he couldn't tell. 

"I'm sorry," Harry offered calmly, speaking slowly. It was strange, speech without the feel of tongue and lips and teeth to guide you. "I didn't mean to frighten you. I can take it. I'm fine."

"I'm not asking you to _take it_ , Harry, what—" Draco got up, growling, and walked the length of the room. His hair swished like kelp under the sea, and he pushed it back, over and over, the way he did with Harry's hair sometimes, heaving breaths while facing the wall. In, out. Harry watched as the shadows thrown by his shoulder blades grew and shrank like dark wings across his back, the skin stretching over the lines of his ribs. When he'd sufficiently calmed himself, he returned to the bed to sit over him and clasped his hand. He squeezed their intertwined fingers, but Harry couldn't squeeze back.

"What just happened?" Draco asked. 

Harry felt like an invalid, and Draco, his parent, here to take his temperature and pat his sweaty brow. He smiled at the thought—he hadn't ever had a parent dote on him when he was sick. 

"This is nice," he said. "Nothing happened. I wanted to feel more, that's all."

"More what, Harry?"

Harry shrugged. The lights from cars cut shapes across the ceiling as they passed in the night. A thumb, Draco's, rubbed over his knuckles, and that was the only feeling connecting him to this place, this bed. In his mind, he was outside, floating high above the cars and the buildings. He was the night sky—total, cold, black.

"What do you want to feel more of?" Draco prodded.

"Nothing. I don't know. I was feeling too much today, overthinking." His voice sounded wobbly to his own ears. He needed to empty his mind, feel nothing, not turn the feelings into words. This was a dangerous game. 

"Sometimes, when I hurt, it clears my mind."

A lorry rumbled by, loose metal parts clanging loudly into the din. Crackling explosions went off to jeers in the park nearby, washing the room briefly in orange light. The Halloween ball seemed miles, years away now. Streamers, candlelight, and the pressure of performance. Harry rolled onto his side, pulled his hand away from Draco's. He needed to go home and find a little corner to hide out in until this passed. 

"Harry? I need you to listen to me." Draco spoke softly, his voice like a salve. "I don't know if anyone's ever said this in as many words to you before."

"It's not a big deal _—"_

"No, listen—I know you. You probably need somebody to say this, so please listen to me when I say that it's okay for you to like this," Draco pressed his palm to Harry's chest over a heart beating too fast. "To enjoy sex. Or just—touch. Pleasure. Without pain being involved. Not this way."

"Of course I know that," Harry scoffed. He sat up and retreated, but the headboard stopped him from getting further away from this talk that was fast bringing up feelings he couldn't name. It hurt to even look at Draco. 

"I don't know what's been said to you, but I know what my Father told me. That Malfoy men are men, and we can take whoever we want, but that under no circumstances were we to be the ones _playing the woman._ "

Rage spiked in Harry's chest, and the confusing twin sounds of firecrackers discharging outside as something shattered inside, falling heavily to the floor in what sounded like a thousand pieces. Draco turned his head in the direction of the sound but didn't flinch. 

_Now, he should hurt you. He has every right to be angry—you've gone and broken his things, you're going to ruin this, his life—_

"It's fine," he murmured, "whatever it is, it's fine." He smoothed his palm over the place where the locket had once burned into Harry's chest. Draco had never asked him about how he'd got that scar, and that made Harry's eyes prickle now, to think how lucky he was to have Draco to take care of him. He smoothed his palm directly over the place where his heart was constricted in the cage of his ribs, unaware of the turmoil his touch caused. 

"I hate him," Harry said when he found his voice again. "I hate what he's done. What he does to you."

Draco dipped his head so that his face was covered by a sheet of hair. "Quite." He looked back at Harry warmly and with far too much kindness. "The point is that I took that with me and held onto it, and I let it hurt me for a long time."

 _You should have gotten away earlier._

A weight was growing, pressing on his chest as memories floated too close to the surface, like Inferi crawling up from the lakebed. They would overtake him if he let them get too close; he couldn't do this. Not with Draco, not with anybody. Not here, not now, not ever. 

"Draco, please," his voice a reedy whisper. "It's nothing. I'm fine, really."

"I bet you heard it from your Uncle, and that lump of boy you call cousin, and others. That this is wrong. That you're wrong."

"It doesn't matter," Harry breathed the words. 

"Don't do that," Draco snapped. He squeezed Harry's hand and pulled it close to his chest so that Harry could feel his heartbeat, a steady thump. "Of course it matters, and it hurts, and who gets in trouble if you finally admit it?" 

Harry shook his head, pressed his lips together. He couldn't hear this. It was easier to be hurt than to talk about this. About anything. 

"But Harry, you know what I know now?"

There was a pit in Harry's throat, the size of a walnut.

"Lucius was wrong. They were all wrong. Even Dumbledore—what he did to keep you safe, what your childhood was like—" He sighed. "What I'm trying to say is that you deserve pleasure. You've been hurt so many times in your life, but your purpose is not simply to withstand pain. Just because you're good at it doesn't make it who you are."

Harry could barely swallow around the thing. It was growing, and there was nowhere for him to go. 

"You've got to set those old thoughts on fire and do away with them. Sex isn't one more thing for you to endure. You don't have to endure anything anymore. Tell me you understand that?"

Harry wanted to please Draco, but he couldn't move. He was stuck on a precipice and terrified of falling off the edge.

"You know it too. You drive yourself sick with worry for others. You're always saying yes to anything that's asked of you."

"I'm only trying—" 

"No, Harry," Draco spoke sharply, even as his eyes radiated worry, and something more than care, something dangerously close to what that other thing, that special thing Harry was careful not to dream about, could look like. "You run yourself ragged, and out there you can play martyr all you like, but in here, with me? I won't let you. Because in here, what I want matters too."

The pit swole into something so big Harry was sure that soon he wouldn't be able to breathe around it. He pushed up and out of bed, vaguely registering Draco's confused questions of where he was going. 

He should be home, he should be alone, he should be able to block this out. There wasn't a cellar here, but there was a pantry, half-empty, and there he went, and all the lights that typically flickered on when they entered the rooms stayed black because that's what he needed. His fingers trailed the wall, and he found the corner and sat, limbs pulled in tightly, and for some reason, Draco followed him, and it was Draco that would be his undoing. Draco, barely visible in the blackness, a throw in one hand because it was cold in the pantry, and Harry was naked, and Draco wanted him to be comfortable because he didn't understand that the discomfort was what Harry needed, understood—deserved. 

Draco touched the edges of Harry's face with his fingertips, from his temple down along the edge of his jaw. 

"Harry? If you can hear me, know that you're good, and you deserve good to happen to you." Harry swallowed hard. His feelings would choke him—he'd suffocate in here, and Draco would think it was his fault. 

"I will never hurt you, pet. I refuse," Draco said, his voice breaking on the last word.

Harry let out a puff of air and rocked, gripping Draco's arm because it grounded him, kept him from floating back off into the night sky. His eyes filled with tears of their own accord, and if he blinked, the tears would fall, and he was a man who had not cried, not in years, not for anyone. Not anymore. Surely, never for himself.

Draco asked, "Do you understand me?" and when Harry nodded, he blinked, and the tears did fall, the shame so hot that they burned tracks down his cheeks. Draco's hands were firm as he cupped his face between them, thumbs wiping the stains away.

"I'll never hurt you, Harry," he said, and Harry kept nodding even as more tears fell. As he tried for a smile that failed him, corners of his lips pulled down. As his breath shuddered, and he didn't know why it was this gentleness that undid him, but he could feel the cracks in the dam spreading as he tried to pull away from hands that held him all the while.

When he finally gave in and leaned into the space of Draco's chest, the crown of his head fit perfectly under Draco's jaw. Like this was the space that had been waiting until he crumbled down to the size and shape he needed to be so that he could fit here.

There was no knowing how long they stayed like that. Harry could hardly think, couldn't speak. At least he was protected, encompassed by Draco's embrace.

 _Safe_ ,he thought _, safe._

It was then that he realized how drained he was, so tired it was like his bones ground to dust with each pulsing sob. Draco held him like that as long as it took for him to be able to hear and understand words again, for him to be led, limp as a rag doll back to bed. When Harry was spent, empty, he pulled away to draw stuttering breaths of clear air, leaving Draco's chest wet.

"I'm sorry," he croaked, waving a hand that dried them both. Draco gave him a confused look.

"Don't apologize _."_ He smoothed hair back from his face. "Gods, you're so strange. Why can't you let yourself cry?"

Harry dug his palms into his eye sockets until fireworks went off in the black sky of his vision. Tears leaked out his nostrils, and his eyelids burned. Everything was a mess—he wanted to leave, or crawl under the bed—just away, to be alone with his decrepitude. 

"I don't get to cry," he said. How was it Draco didn't understand this? "I'm here, aren't I? I made it."

"And you're allowed to feel things, you nitwit."

Draco pressed something soft into one of his hands. It was a square of white cloth—a handkerchief to wipe his face with. Harry frowned at it.

"Cotton?" Hiccups interrupted the syllables. "You make silk, normally."

"Silk isn't the material for the job now, is it?" Draco said, thumbing away more tears from his cheeks. It was confusing that Draco cared enough to think about the absorbent qualities of the material. 

_Or maybe it isn't confusing at all_ , Harry thought dimly, _maybe it all fits. Maybe Draco isn't the prickly, cold, cut-off one in the bed. Maybe you haven't given him the chance to be so warm as this._

"I should be grateful to be alive," Harry said, at long last. Even his voice was wet.

"And this is what being alive is all about!" Draco said incredulously. "You have to see that, surely? There's always going to be pain, eventually, but there's happiness too. You, of all people, shouldn't be made to live your whole life in mourning. You deserve to _live,_ Harry. To be happy."

Harry nodded as though this made sense to him. 

"Now, please tell me what the fuck is going on with you tonight. I'm scared that you're—" Harry looked at him, and his clear grey eyes were wide with fright. He stopped to clear his throat. "That you're going to do something that you regret."

"I'm not going to do anything, don't worry." Harry tried for another smile, and it failed again. He might have broken his ability to give them. He took a deep breath and wiped his nose.

"Today's the day my parents died," he started. It took some time after this to continue, without the feeling of a sob overtaking him. It was as though this explosion of sadness was a well with no bottom in sight.

"My apologies. I didn't realize," Draco said. Harry shrugged.

"Everyone forgets, and I don't want to winge on about it. Some years I need to be alone for one fucking minute, you know?" Draco nodded, as though he weren't an insane person sniffling back snot, complaining about being alive. "But, I can't."

"Has it always been like this?" Draco asked. "As hard as this?"

Harry sniffled, wiped his nose with his arm, handkerchief be damned. 

"No. It wasn't like this at all, but now, I think about how I'm another year older than they were when they died. And how I'm still here, and they're not, and how that's so unfair. I can't explain it." He shrugged. He was too tired to go into the _why_ of his own resurrection, making the knowledge of their deaths newly difficult. To be able to remember the empty blankness, of turning to ash, to nothing but the space between particles and then to come back into a body that was so much much flesh and bone and blood and torrents of misery, and to pretend that he was the same as he'd ever been.

"And sometimes I'm mad that they all—that everyone's left me alone." He sucked in breaths, but it was as though they couldn't reach the bottoms of his lungs—stuttering, jagged sucks of air. "It's just hard."

"You don't have to explain anything to me." 

The charm to fix his vision had worn out completely, and Draco's form was nothing more than a ghost. A spirit with a warm touch. Harry wouldn't be surprised to wake up to discover that the whole night—the entire affair—had been a fever dream.

"I thought this year that maybe I could sneak down to the Mirror of Erised, if it's still there."

"I know what it is," Draco said. Harry nodded, and fresh tears fell. It felt pointless to try to stem them now, so they fell where they may, little wet bombs darkening the blanket below.

"I saw them in it. I was eleven." Harry spoke through hitched breaths, taking his sentences in short gasps. "I was obsessed. Visiting them in it. I thought I could see them again tonight. But I couldn't get away, and by the time I tried, I found that I've forgotten how to find the way." He started to laugh at how pathetic it all sounded, and Draco got up and left as Harry sat, his laughter punctuated by crying that wouldn't stop. When he returned, he pressed a glass vial and a glass of water into Harry's trembling hands.

"To calm your nerves," he said. Harry swallowed the potion obediently. It was as though he'd eaten a handful of sand. He could feel as it soaked up the deep well of feeling inside of him, leaving him barren. Dry again.

"Better?" Draco asked before he knocked back his own vial.

"I think so," Harry said, sniffling. "You didn't have to take that because of me, did you? Have I upset you?"

"No, Harry," Draco said, pushing him gently back to lay down. "Don't worry about it. You miss your parents," Draco added, putting the things in his hands down at his bedside table. Harry melted into the mattress as wool enveloped his senses, everything softening. "That's only natural."

"Why do I feel so angry, then?" Harry whispered into the darkness of the room. Draco tucked a pillow under his head, pulled the blanket over the both of them. The heat from his skin seeped into Harry's back as he cradled him closely.

"It's grief, pet. You can love them and be angry with them for leaving you, too. You don't let yourself feel your sadness, but it leaks out in other ways. I think you don't want to bother anybody with it, so you end up hurting yourself instead."

"How are you so smart?" Harry asked, nearly asleep now. Draco huffed a laugh as Harry closed his eyes.

"We're not so different, you and I," Draco said. "I can see it in you, that search for oblivion. Bottling it up won't help. Hurting yourself won't help."

Harry made a sound in his chest. Words couldn't come anymore because if they could, he would apologize a thousand times. But they couldn't, and it was as though Draco's murmuring and soothing touch were the beginning of a fantasy. 

"You don't believe me yet when I say I'll never hurt you, pet. But you will. You'll see," Draco whispered. Harry was on the edge of deep sleep already, and the words could have been spoken by a spectre in his dreams. "I'm going to see you happy, so help me, god."

* * *

**Notes** : I'm sorry for the heartbreaker! More to come, and where there is angst, there is eventually fluff. Hold in there, and happy Halloween!

xx


	12. The Naming of Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old friends, unexpected places, and a shared weekend in.

* * *

**Saturday, November 1, 2003 | All Saints Day**

Harry woke to the feeling like the duvet had twisted up strangely behind him, long wrinkles pressing into his back. He wiggled and the lines moved in response, realigning to his body before they fell still again. 

_But these aren't your sheets._

They were smoother, and cool to the touch, and smelled strongly of—

Draco. It dawned on him that these were Draco's sheets he slept on, and what he felt behind him wasn't bedding at all, but Draco's front pressed firmly along his back. He curled into Harry, scars raised like long mountain ranges on the map of his body, pressing their topography into Harry's skin. 

As always, Draco radiated heat that spoke to a fire burning under his snowy exterior. Harry tucked his feet in against his shins to warm them, cold from having poked out the end of the blanket. 

_It's strange,_ he thought _, how much we're like a matching set like this._

Like novelty salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of jigsaw pieces that fit just so. 

Draco's arm squeezed him closer, and he shifted. He wondered what it meant to be feeling these things: Draco, still sleeping. And Harry, in his bed. 

"Good morning." Draco's voice, a low rumble at his neck. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah," Harry responded, eyes squeezed shut as memories of how his predicament came to be flashed back to him in a flood. The party and Gollybean. Stumbling, pushing for a fight, and the sound of shattering. The pantry. And tears—so many that he'd exhausted himself, and then there was the bed and the blackness of sleep without dreams.

_You made a fool of yourself._

He closed his eyes and nuzzled his nose into the pillow, willing for a few more minutes of being held like this before Draco recoiled from him. _He hasn't remembered what happened yet, but it's a ticking clock._

Best case scenario, Draco would ask him nicely to get out and to come back once he'd sorted out his shit. Which would be never, because it wasn't just "his shit" that needed sorting. _He_ needed sorting, but it was a lost cause. So, his reality was already set out for him to be the worst possible case: getting out and never returning. 

"Did you sleep alright?" Draco asked, the question punctuated by the throb of his hardening cock against Harry's bum. Morning wood, the thing Harry had so openly craved just days ago, now making him tense up. 

He nodded, wondering where this was going.

"Good," Draco said, voice gravelly first thing in the morning, and then there was the brush of lips on his shoulder and then—nothing. Draco was across the room by the time Harry dared to roll over. 

The last glimpse he caught was a smudge of white against the blackness of the hallway; Draco's body elongated in a yawn before he disappeared out the doorway. 

Harry turned back towards the wall, curling into the shape of a crumpled ball that he favoured in sleep. He didn't want to face Draco this morning. The possibility was strong that he'd never be able to talk to him again without bursting into flames with embarrassment. 

A couple minutes later, Draco's voice floated over from the doorway. "Even if you slept well, I'm still bagged, and it's far too early to be up on the day after Halloween. Fancy a lie-in? Or, better than, what about breakfast in bed?"

Harry turned to see him there, weight all in one long leg, arms dangling from the doorframe. The way his head was tilted, Harry could tell he expected an answer.

"I—uh. Sure. That sounds great."

"Good," he strut into the room, "I wasn't sure about your schedule. I don't want to presume, but if you did have plans, you should cancel them." 

Harry sat up, rubbed his arms. "No. Nothing important." 

He thought that there should be obvious signs of it after all they'd been through overnight, but everything was in place. Draco's voice was buoyant, his mood light. Harry carried no bruises; nothing hurt. 

"A day in seems about right, don't you think?"

"I—er—" Harry watched the slim line of his body enter his closet and stop, turning back. Considering him. It was apparent that he remained naked, but Harry could hardly enjoy the view. 

"I can stay a bit; it's just—I can't see anything. I haven't got my glasses."

"Oh, right. I can fix that."

He returned to bed and set the charm for Harry's sight with a nonchalant flick of his wand. 

"Did that work? I never do personal charms on other people," he asked, tossing his wand aside. "Did I do it too hard?"

"Erm, no." The feeling of tightening in Harry's eyes gave them a brief sense of dryness characteristic of the eyesight charm as his surroundings came into focus. Last night's make-up was gone from Draco's face, though smudges of red lipstick remained on his pillow. Harry ran his fingers over the spot, wondering whether it was from their frottage or if Draco'd fallen asleep with it on.

"I'll have to burn that pillowcase—it's MAC, it'll never come out." He gave the pillowcase a private smile, remembering something sweet. "Don't worry, I cleaned you up last night too. You looked like you'd been mauled by a horny clown." He shared his smile with Harry, covering the fingers on the lipstick stain with his own; warm, always so warm. "I cast a couple other spells on you too, just so you're aware. Calming. Healing. You might feel a bit groggy for a while, and dry-mouth is common. Nothing a juice with breakfast won't solve." 

Harry nodded, staring at their hands. His heart was becoming sore again—he hadn't expected a soft touch, and Draco was handling him with kid gloves.

"How do you know that charm?" he deflected. "For my eyes?"

Draco waved a hand dismissively. "I may be a bit far-sighted, while at the same time fairly vain. You can put two-and-two together." He huffed a breath into his cupped palm and grimaced. "Ew, morning breath. If you'll excuse me," he moved to stand. 

"You? Need glasses?"

Draco _tsked_ him. "Don't act so scandalized."

Harry opened his mouth and was promptly shushed by a look, Draco's almondine eyes drawn tight. 

"Before you say something you regret, I'll have you know that there will be breakfast ready in twenty minutes, and if you know what's good for you, you'll keep from running your mouth about my little case of hypermetropia. Now—coffee or tea?"

"Er. Coffee," Harry answered, stunned.

"And you call yourself a proper Englishman," he pulled a face. "Your wand is on the side-table unless you don't need it to clean your teeth because you're so awe-inspiringly powerful or what have you," he added. With that, he was up, hitching his hair up into a high bun. 

"Can I do anything?" Harry asked.

Draco only shook his head as he pulled on a house-robe and knotted the belt about his waist. 

"No need. I'll be right back."

It was in this way that Harry found himself a short time later nibbling the crust off of a triangle of buttered toast and staring down a modest pile of scrambled eggs, the rustle of newsprint and Draco's running commentary the soundtrack to his weirdest Saturday morning on record.

"Look at this, Bensen up to it again," Draco said, shoving a section of the Daily Prophet under Harry's nose for inspection. "Saying regulations are needed to control the movement of trolls across borders." His tone implied that this was a self-evidently stupid concept. 

Harry wasn't sure what was happening. It was as though some third option had revealed itself, one where he and Draco pretended the breakdown hadn't happened and continued on seamlessly. 

_Maybe he's giving you an out. Maybe he just wants to play house, and we can tuck last night away into a room with all the other memories we don't visit._

"I don't follow. They are, well. Trolls," Harry said. 

That would be incongruous, though. Draco was much more of a _confront and deal with it_ sort of a person. At least Harry thought he was. 

Draco snatched the sheaves back with a dramatic sigh.

"It's not about the trolls; please tell me you can see that," he said. "He's been at this same game for years. Restriction of movement across borders isn't our game. Creatures can't respect them, and we can't enforce them. Unless," he added with an arched brow.

Harry mirrored the look; Draco rolled his eyes. " _Unless_ , dear Harry, we have some sort of registry for them, where we could tag them and track their movements. It's the first step to all sorts of registries. Pureblood bigotry masquerading as public safety."

"Mmm," Harry hummed. Draco cast his attention to the triangle of toast pinched between his fingers. "Finish that before you get crumbs all over. And at least try a bite of the eggs before they go cold so you can let me know what a wonderful job I did with them." 

Harry nodded, cheeks going hot. 

"Are those seven-minute, or scrambled?"

Draco frowned, mouth opening on the verge of berating him for silliness, and then he stopped.

"We've made our way to overpriced toast and juice," he said instead. His cheeks pinked, and he looked away, demure, almost. "You remember."

"Of course, I remember," Harry said, and then he had to look away too, taking a sip of orange juice for want of something to do with his hands. 

"Well, I don't want you out of my hair just yet." 

He wanted to make Draco happy, and if eating would do that, he wanted to do that for him. He'd lost over a stone since the height of summertime, to depression, and anxiety, and the deleterious effects of constant drinking. The thought of buttery, warm eggs was nauseating to him, though, so there was no use trying. 

Draco was babying him, which was, in its own way, admitting to what had happened. Harry desperately wanted to ask how to play his part correctly, but Draco had abandoned the paper to the ground and started in on the stack of mail on his lap, and a look of deep concentration pinched his face. A bit of marmalade was smeared on his cheek, and Harry didn't think before he picked up a napkin from the tray floating before them and dotted him clean.

Draco frowned, and Harry immediately abandoned the napkin. 

_That was tactless. Of course he doesn't want you—_

"I have to go," Draco spoke, his eyes flicking over the letter in front of him. "Out. For a little while."

"I'm sorry if I made you angry." 

Harry's voice came out frightened, small. Draco mustn't have heard him as he finished scanning the letter. He pressed absently at the spot Harry had cleaned, only somewhat noticing the touch.

"I won't be long. An hour, on the outside. I thought I could skip it, but—never mind that. You could—"

"Are we not going to talk about it?" Harry directed the question at his knees. 

"What about, exactly?" Draco asked. He picked at something from the lip of his mug, and the sustained lack of eye contact was becoming pointed. Perhaps he was too embarrassed for him to broach the subject? 

_Wouldn't that be the most perfectly British way possible? Avoid, suppress, never speak of it again?_

"About last night." Harry wrung his hands together; the toast wasn't sitting right. He was going to be sick; he was sure of it. He did, however, have Draco's silence, which was close to having his full attention, so he ploughed on.

"I was completely out of line, coming to you like that, in public. I broke the rules—I broke so many rules. Fuck." Harry ran a hand through his hair, a wave of guilty embarrassment constricting his stomach, acid churning within it. "I don't know what I was thinking. I had no right—"

"Pet," Draco said, pulling Harry's chin so that they were forced to look at one another. His direct attention warmed Harry like a flood of sunlight. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"It's more than that," Harry started, but Draco pressed a finger to his lips.

"It is. I know, I know. I'm being obtuse, and it isn't helping. I need a little while to collect my thoughts, that's all. It's how I am." Harry nodded like this made sense, like this wasn't just the beginning of their relationship's swan song. "We can talk when I'm back if that's alright with you?" 

Harry swallowed. The talk wouldn't go well; he already knew what he should do. What he should have done. 

"I'll go too. I shouldn't be here in the first place," he forced the words out through a throat that was almost too tight to let them loose. "I really should just go."

"Please, don't," Draco said. A smile flickered on his face, open, hopeful. "I'm not cross, but I am concerned, and I really do want to talk about it. Wait here for me?" He leaned in, eyes flicking between Harry's eyes and lips, waiting for a response. 

"Okay." Harry closed his eyes to accept the kiss that accompanied his words. It was soft, almost chaste. Draco's palm cradled his jaw as he deepened the kiss, tongues meeting and probing further, and it was in this very delicate position that Harry heard the words that, in some ways, he'd been waiting with bated breaths for two months to hear.

"Oh, my fucking _god._ Draco Malfoy, am I actually watching you snog Harry Potter, or have I died and gone to pervy gossip heaven?"

They broke apart so fast that the levitating tray stood no chance of adjusting to the disruption. Harry rolled off the bed, kicking it through the air and taking the sheets with him. He landed flat on his arse, his heart racing as though a cadre of Death Eaters had barged in. He could hardly process the mess strewn about him for the fact that a voice had spoken to him _while he'd been kissing Draco_ and that apparently, somehow, he was both alive and awake while it happened.

"Don't try to _Obliviate_ me now, darling. I keep a journal, and once I realize something's amiss, I'll go straight to the Ministry." The voice was familiar—a woman's, posh and acidic. 

"You wouldn't dare," came Draco's retort. Anger boiled up in Harry as he realized that he had left Draco to defend both of them, and so he stood, holding the sheets bunched about his waist in a makeshift skirt.

"Don't you dare threaten him," he shouted, pointing a vengeful finger at— 

Pansy Parkinson. Last night's make-up was still caked to her skin, raccoon-eyes of mascara and the dark outline of a moody lip colour going strong as she stood looking amused as all hell in the doorway in a matching grey sweatsuit. 

Draco snapped to face him, face pale. "Harry, whatever you're thinking of doing—don't."

"Oh, what's he going to do, fucking _Expelliarmus_ me to death?" Pansy asked him, traipsing into the room. Her smirk knew no bounds. 

"I'm serious, Pans. He's more powerful than he knows." Draco grit out the words as though it cost him to say them. "It's hackneyed, but it's true. He'll _Obliviate_ you by accident if he feels strongly enough about it."

Pansy raised her brows and made a considering sound as she stepped further into the room. Harry's wand flew into his hand without him even thinking it, and Draco crawled over the bed to slap a hand over his, his eyes wide and pleading.

"Don't," he warned. "I've got her. She's all bark."

"Am I now, Draco?" Pansy laughed at this. "For this," she pointed at the two of them, eyes gone squinty. "For this, you're mine, on-call, for a year. Luncheons, birthdays _and_ weddings."

"Fuck that," Draco spat, spinning back to glare at her. "Your birthday, two weddings, that's it."

"Do you see this? That you've got _Harry Potter_ naked, thriving, eating little biscuits out of your palm, and you're trying to bargain with me? He's the saviour of fucking wizardkind, and he's snogging the crown prince of Slytherin." She crossed her arms, looking very proud of herself. "Now it's bar mitzvah's as well."

"Oh fuck off, Pan, nobody invited you anyway." Draco sat at an elegant angle on the bed, sparing Harry a tetchy look that almost worked; he dropped his duelling stance, but not his wand-arm. 

"Birthdays, plural, and two weddings. That's my offer."

Harry watched this exchange as a tennis match, becoming increasingly confused. He couldn't tell when the points landed, or who was winning, or what the purpose of any of it was.

"You're in a tough spot to be bargaining, now—for Christ's sake, Potter, would you put down your wand? Can't you see the adults are talking?" Pansy frowned at him until he lowered it, earning him a simpering smile from her. She turned back to Draco. 

"Three weddings and any funerals. Take it or leave it."

Harry looked to Draco, who ignored him completely. He was far too busy trying to kill Pansy with one of his glares as she inspected the last bits of things on the tray, wobbling half-heartedly at knee height. She picked an errant strawberry to nibble on, pretending that Draco's audible huffing didn't bother her. Vines stuck out of her rats-nest of black hair, crushed and significantly less verdant than they had been the night previous. 

Draco hummed. He'd hit on something. He turned to Harry and mouthed the word, _Leverage._

"You wouldn't dare go messing up your latest catch of fresh muff, now would you? And she's a friend of Potter's, isn't she? A _close_ friend." 

Pansy took a step back, aghast. Or, rather, melodramatically aghast. The whole scene was taking on a theatrical air, and Harry felt this was likely how Pansy and Draco communicated regularly. Draco lazed against the stack pillows, flicking his wand to clear the bits of food and drink from the bedspread.

"Two weddings, your birthday, and that's my final offer because I'm your friend, you absolute wench. Deal?"

"Fine. Whatever. Deal." Pansy threw the strawberry top to the floor. "I'm going to be mad about this for at _least_ a month. How could you not tell me? _Me?_ "

"Would someone please explain to me what is happening?" Harry sat tentatively back in the bed.

"In good time," Draco answered, "but right now, I actually have to go. I was just going," he added pointedly for Pansy's benefit.

Pansy huffed and crossed her arms, pushing her breasts up nearly against her neck. 

_"Fine._ I'll see myself out. I simply wanted to share the hot goss about who we pulled last night and, well," she smiled deviously in Harry's direction, "it looks like it's still going well. I thought you had rules, Draco. What about sex and breakfast—"

"Out!" Draco yelled, and Pansy rolled her eyes but quickly retraced her steps back out of the room. 

"My lips are sealed, I love you, chat soon you wanker. Laters!" she called. Both men sat in stony silence as her footsteps clanged down the staircase and the front door slammed.

"I'll tell you later," Draco said before letting out a growl of annoyance. "I can't believe I let her corner me into anything, and now two weddings in one year. Two!"

"You're leaving?" Harry asked.

Draco was up, grumbling to himself as he stripped out of his robe and stalked into his walk-in closet. Clearly the work of wizarding space, Harry caught glances of items floating past the open door, the closet appearing to be roughly the same size as the bedroom itself. 

"Yes," he called from the closet's depths. "As I said, I won't be long. I wouldn't go if I didn't have to, and I want to explain—"

Draco returned, in a rush, straightening the knot of a tie of olive green and grey check. 

"Do I look schoolboy enough in this?" he asked, preoccupied with getting the knot to sit right. 

Harry was shocked by the question into silence. 

Draco's hair remained in its messy bun, a way he distinctly never wore it at Hogwarts, and he had a silver hoop earring dangling from one ear. Still, the tie, three-piece black suit and cloak were reminiscent of his later school years. He looked—delectable, really—a wet dream of his school self. 

"Er," Harry managed. 

"Potter? Answer the question."

He licked his lips and swallowed, momentarily forgetting what the question was. 

"Very." He was rewarded with a tight smile.

"Thank you. Now, please stay put. Don't disappear on me; it'll only serve to annoy me once I find you. I want to explain all that business with Pans, and I—" he looked to a gold wristwatch that Harry had never seen him wear before and swore under his breath. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it on a sigh. "I wouldn't leave at all; it's only that I promised my mum that I'd help out this morning." He tugged at the collar of his cloak, clearly unhappy with how it sat, and Harry motioned him over, flattening it for him. 

"I'd really like to come home to you still being here," Draco murmured as Harry smoothed the fabric under his palms. 

"In bed?" Harry asked. They were so close, Harry could smell the bergamot from Draco's tea on his breath. 

Draco chuckled. "Wherever you like, pet, as long as I find you here. Will you wait for me, please? Promise me you won't run off?"

Harry didn't want to promise. It would be good to rip the bandage off now, to run away and hide, to drink himself to sleep and close the Floo, to give in and take a little vacation, yes, a vacation from life, from everything, from everyone. They could never speak again—they wouldn't have to talk about it at all, it could be so easy— 

"Promise?" Draco whispered.

Harry closed his eyes and nodded his yes. 

"I'll be right back," Draco took him by the chin and planted a kiss softly between his brows. "Be good."

* * *

Overwhelmed by options in Draco's closet, Harry selected the first jumper pulled from a hanger. It was so oversized that the neck frequently fell over one shoulder, but he liked how the artfully frayed cuffs tickled his palms. He unearthed a pair of the infamous secret joggers to complete the outfit, and so as he walked Draco's flat, he felt like he was playing the part of a university student. His reflection in the mirror looked it— hair overlong and unruly, face gaunt with dark half-moons under his eyes and the shadow of stubble pushing in all over, as though he'd been partying all night and was ready to stumble outside for life-giving caffeine.

He busied himself cleaning the bedroom, half by magic and half by hand, and then the kitchen, vanishing the shards of yet another broken mask. He did the washing up, enjoying the stillness of Draco's flat—Muggle places didn't have the thrum of magical ones, and it was calming to his jangling nerves. 

He felt sick with guilt when we remembered the sound of something crashing the night before. Upon further investigation, he decided it had likely been the upstairs bathroom mirror, though when he inspected it, he couldn't find even a hairline fracture. 

Draco found him, just under the promised hour since his departure, curled up on the sofa. He'd turned the television on but left the programme on mute.

"What's this?" he asked, sitting gingerly at the edge of the cushion.

"I'm not quite sure," Harry mumbled. "A murder mystery. I think the gardener did it."

"Ah. The help," Draco said. Harry started to retort but saw that Draco watched askance, looking for his reaction, teasing him. He lay back down, continued to stare at the screen. 

"I'm glad you stayed," he said after a minute passed.

Harry was slow to answer. "I'm trying to figure out why you wanted me to."

Draco leaned back and loosened the knot of his tie. 

"Isn't it painfully obvious?" 

Harry shook his head a little and watched the crinkles that came with genuine smiles extended from the corners of his eyes. Draco looked at Harry with openness, so vulnerable it made his heart hurt. 

"Against my best efforts, I've come to care for you, pet. Quite a bit, in fact."

"Oh," said Harry. The crinkles grew deeper. 

_He'll look so good,_ Harry thought absently, _when he's older, and the little lines turn to proper wrinkles._

"' _Oh?'"_ His eyebrows rose incredulously, amused. "That's it? Really?"

"I don't mean—"

"No, no, Harry, by all means, _'Oh'_ will suffice—"

"I like you too. A lot," Harry blurted out. Draco's smile had nowhere left to grow. "What? Is that funny?"

"Not at all," he said. "Tell me more, don't let me cut you off."

"Well. I know that we're not supposed to—" Harry closed his eyes. It was easier this way, speaking to the abyss. "I know that I shouldn't go asking for more than what I've been given, and we only just talked about, _more_ , in general. And it's childish, the way I wanted to turn fuck buddies into, well, dating—"

"So that's what you want," Draco said knowingly.

"Oh my god Draco, shut up, won't you? I'm really trying here, and you can be so irritating," Harry opened his eyes to Draco's, bright with mirth. "It took me a while to figure it out, but I like you very much."

"And what? Tell me the 'what,' Harry, I can hear it lingering in the air."

Harry's heart hammered in his chest. It felt impossible, speaking to this avatar of the Draco he'd known at sixteen, sitting across from him, close enough to touch. 

"And what happened last night is exactly what I didn't want to happen. I didn't want to let you in and immediately go fucking it up by showing you what an absolute dogshit thing my mind is." 

It felt like he was pleading for Draco to see reason, to free himself from guilt and let himself be disgusted with Harry, but it wasn't working. Draco sat and looked at him, not a sneer or sense of revulsion to be seen.

"I'm not right, sometimes. You've seen."

Draco shrugged a little and untucked the hem of his shirt from his trousers, losing the waistcoat.

"How long?" Draco asked. He popped the buttons to his sleeves and rolled them up. Every bit of extraneous clothing lost brought him back to the present day Draco that Harry was familiar with. It was like watching him speed forwards through time.

"How long, what?"

"How long did it take for you to figure out that you fancied me?"

"Coffee, at La Caffeteria," Harry said. Draco's eyes widened a touch. "I could hardly sleep, and I worried over my outfit for ages. Over a t-shirt and jeans. I—" Harry cut himself off for once, as he decided to keep the memory of how he'd gotten hard under the table to himself. The blush that came along with the thought crept across his cheeks nonetheless.

"Oh," Draco said.

"' _Oh'_ like, that's good, _'oh,'_ or that's a bad _'oh'_?" Harry asked.

"Oh, like that's before we were, um. Doing. This." Draco swatted a finger back and forth between them for emphasis.

"Shite," Harry said. He could practically feel the blood rushing from his face as he blanched at the admission. "Maybe I shouldn't have—That doesn't scare you, right? I mean. Fuck. Forget I said that."

He took a deep breath, tried to redirect the conversation.

"What about you?" Harry asked. Draco smashed his lips together and shook his head vehemently.

"Fuck off! You can't not tell me now."

"Unfortunately, you'll find that I can and will choose when to share my secrets. You'd be better off doing the same. Go wearing your heart on your sleeve like this, and you're going to get hurt."

Harry scoffed. "Is this you trying to warn me off?" he asked. 

"Not at all," Draco said. "You're doing a terrible job of it yourself, mind you. All this, _'I'm so terribly broken, my soul is a battlefield of ugly terror.'_ You do know to whom you're talking, don't you? You can't scare me off with one little breakdown." Draco raised his burned arm, gave Harry a wry look. "You forget so easily that I'm the king of the dramatic decline. You're barely a baron of breakdowns."

"You've never told me how you got that." 

"Remember what I just said about secrets? Hearts? Sleeves?" Draco dropped the arm. "You never asked."

"But I can ask now?"

"Yes," Draco said, fiddling with the strap of his watch and placing it on the coffee table. It was bulky and masculine—at odds with Draco's general appearance. Harry wondered if it was a gift or an inheritance, perhaps. "I don't think that's the question on your mind, is it?

Harry played with the frayed edges of Draco's oversized jumper. He wondered why he'd ever needed clothes so big. Or was it a leftover from an ex? Or had his style simply changed at some point in the last few years. Perhaps he'd had a goth phase and had gone to raves and listened to industrial music until his ears bled. His recent past was a black hole to Harry. He had so many questions when he thought about it, but one loomed largest at the moment.

"Where'd you go this morning?"

Draco rubbed his wrist, frowning. "A had a date with Narcissa. She hasn't been doing terribly well, and I worry. I help out when I can. She half hates it," he added with a twist of his lips.

"Why?"

"She needs help with the things she used to detest anyone for trying to interfere with. Her ineptitude makes her feels powerless." Harry reached out and brushed his fingers at Draco's wrist, where he kept rubbing. Something warm passed from his fingertips to Draco's skin. Draco looked at him, surprised.

"Better?" Harry asked. Draco nodded.

"Yeah," he shook his head and looked away. "Today, it was ordering bulbs for spring. Last year she kept forgetting she'd done it and ordered them three times; they'd all gone to rot by the time I came by the house."

"Is she going to be okay?" Harry asked. With this turn in the conversation to the personal, each new word felt like it had to be chosen carefully, like picking up a piece of glass. Touch one the wrong way, and you'd end up cut. 

"Yes, she'll be fine. She gets maudlin in the winter with me gone, and Lucius off doing whatever the fuck it is he gets up to these days." Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. "Enough about them. I owe you something of an explanation about Pansy. I take it you've run into each other recently?"

"I, er. We. Yeah." Harry sat up, scratching at the back of his head.

"Clear as mud, as always," Draco huffed. "Pans and I go a long, long way back. She's always known I'm bent. She says she's bi, but her track record says otherwise."

"In which direction?"

Draco grinned. "Towards the island of Lesbos. Long story short, I'm her beard-for-hire when it comes to family events."

Harry had to stifle a laugh. It felt incongruous but good, too, to want to laugh again. There was still a hollow emptiness inside of him, a hole he wasn't sure he'd be able to fill without whisky. 

"How does that work, exactly? Beards aren't usually so obviously, um. Gay."

Draco explained the ruse, his hands dancing in the air to punctuate the exciting parts, pointer finger rolling in a wave to elucidate where time passed, the "so on, and so forth." His voice asked only for Harry's attention, and Harry was happy to oblige. He widened his eyes with surprise when Draco shared that Pansy had recently started up with Luna, and that she was the witch in Pansy's clutches at the club the night before. He hummed in ascent when Draco surmised that Pansy had provoked him into coming to the club in the first place and guessed that they'd crossed paths at her work.

It was afternoon, sat on a rough wool blanket on a little hill overlooking a marsh before Harry realized he'd hardly done anything but listen to Draco talk all day, had barely noticed them Apparating, other than the squelch the jump gave his stomach. The knee-high grasses surrounding them had been made to bow and break before, as it was evident that the clearing they'd landed in was purposefully made. A picnic basket was at Harry's wrist; he only vaguely remembered watching Draco pack it.

The skies threatened a storm, dark clouds hanging heavy over a distant London. Without the heat of the early morning sun, the mist of morning hadn't burned off, and a chill crept into the wide neck of Harry's pullover. Distant calls of children were on the air, but much louder than that, birdsong. 

Draco lay on the blanket, suit long ago abandoned for jeans and white knit pullover, a bomber jacket on top of that. Harry wore an overlarge wool coat, the faint scent of smoke on the collar marking it as Draco's. 

Draco was right at home in this strange, boggy place. He twisted onto his stomach to rummage through the picnic basket, emerging with a sandwich wrapped neatly in wax paper. 

"Don't make me eat alone; I'll feel awfully rude." He unfolded the edges of the paper, watching Harry approach the basket and rummage through it for his own meal.

"Where are we?" Harry asked. He selected a sandwich and placed it on the side.

Draco cocked his head. "Somewhere between a flock of widgeons and a warbler, by the sounds of it," he said before taking a bite.

Harry only looked at him, wrung out. 

"Oh, pish. You're no fun. We're on the Thames, a little out of the city. I like to come here and put up a Notice-Me-Not charm. The Muggles built it as a wildlife sanctuary."

"Why did you bring me here?"

Draco avoided answering a long while. He pulled an enormous thermos of tea and a pair of mugs from the basket. As he poured, Harry bit back a smile at how similar Draco and Hermione were, in ways. Clever; good planners. He passed one to Harry, and he was surprised that it was already creamy and overly sweet—just the way he liked it.

Draco blew on his tea. "I come here when I need a little quiet from my thoughts, sometimes."

A raindrop fell on Harry's forehead. He wrapped his arms around his knees, hugging them close for warmth.

The words that hung in the air unsaid; that he thought Harry needed quiet contemplation. 

"After those lunches with Mrs. Parkinson?"

Draco knocked their shoulders together. "You joke, but honestly, yes. My mother always gets word about me going and takes me shopping afterwards. Holding out hope." He shook his head back, and Harry watched him do it, taking in the sharpness of his cheekbones, the exact seashell shape of his ear. Wondering if he wished hard enough if time could stop, if only for the two of them. 

"Hope for what?"

"For Pansy and me. For grandchildren." He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. "It's awful. Everything we buy on those trips is tainted. She spends the entire time trying not to burst into tears when a toddler so much as crosses her line of sight, and I pretend not to notice her doing it."

There was a long silence that Harry wasn't sure how to fill.

"It must be hard, having parents that want grandchildren," he tried. "The Weasley's seem to be in the same camp when it comes to me."

Draco clasped a hand to his mouth. 

"Fuck. All this talk of parents," he said. Little droplets fell steadily, sparkling gems dotting his hair. His eyes were the lightest crystal, the ethereal colour they took when the weather was drab. It was like they changed to outshine the day's grey. "I was trying to give you something else to think about."

"No, it's—good. It's fine." Harry brushed it off. "You shouldn't avoid topics because you presume I can't handle thinking about them. I'm not fragile."

"Trust me, Harry, there isn't a person in the world who'd mistake _you_ for fragile. Surviving is sort of your thing." He smirked. "It's a pity you haven't trademarked _'The Boy Who Lived'_ —imagine the merchandise possibilities." 

"Yeah—I can see it now," Harry held his mug with his knees so he could gesture to an imagined marquee, " _'The Boy Who Lived to Suck Cock'_ would look fantastic on a vest." 

Draco shook his head, mock-thoughtfully, a sharp tooth biting his lower lip. "No, I was thinking bigger. Think quidditch gear—knee-pads." 

Harry bit his lip to contain his smile, while Draco let his take free reign of his face.

"I could still do a better job of it than I am," he said, sobering up. "Unless you want to talk about our parents at length, which I'm fairly sure you don't."

"No, I don't really want to do that, either." 

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on an _Impervius_ charm, waiting until the raindrops stopped. The evil thoughts were coming back, memories of the night before mixed in with his nightmares, with the general anxieties that came with being him. 

_You could have been recognized at the club. Or, what if someone saw a picture of you in the papers at the Hogwarts ball and went to the press that you'd gone to Gollybean afterwards and left with a lanky blond, and what if they knew who Draco was? And Pansy, who knows what Pansy might do, might say—she could have already said something to Luna, and god forbid if Luna mentions it sideways to the rest of your friends and—_

"Tell me what you're thinking," Draco asked. 

Harry stared off into the grey of distance. "I can't say it enough. I'm so sorry about last night."

"And I can't say it enough. It's fine." Draco lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. "That's not what you were thinking, though. You were thinking jagged thoughts and lots of them. Fast ones."

"How do you do that?" Harry tore his eyes away from the sky to stare at Draco. "How do you know what I'm thinking all the time?"

"It's not what," Draco responded, "it's—like, _how_. The pitch of your thoughts—most of the time, it's like white noise to me. When you're pleased, they're smooth. Soothing, almost. Like when I'm giving you head, I can practically hear your brain purring, and it makes me feel so good to hear it, and then I just want to make you feel even better."

"What the fuck," Harry breathed. Draco shrugged, but Harry could see through him too. Draco's strength was in his stony facade, but it itself was a giveaway. When he was at his calmest, he was animated. When he went flat, it was to hide some emotion he thought too big or brash or revealing to share, and his nonchalance now signalled that he too knew this to be something special.

"And sometimes, right when I first see you, your thoughts are so—jagged."

"How so?" 

"Bright and fast, and I don't know how you stand it. So many of them. So I just talk and talk, and you seem to like the talking because they quiet down." 

"And is it like that for you all the time? Like, out in public, is it just—din?"

Draco shook his head a little. "No. Normally I need to concentrate on listening in, but with you, it just happens. Happened—it wasn't like this at school. At school, I could barely hear you."

"And now?" Harry hated how hopeful the words came out.

Draco smiled into his tea. "And now, I don't think I could turn it off if I tried."

It was happening again—Draco's sweet words making Harry's insides twist and hurt. "I'm really sorry about—you feel like you have to make me feel better. I'm a shit Occlumens, but I could try—"

"I don't want you to hide them from me, Harry," Draco reached out and rubbed his cheek, his thumb scratching over his stubble. "I'm asking you to tell me what you're thinking."

Harry closed his eyes, concentrated on the touch, and the birdsong, and the rushing of the winds. It was enough to keep the ugly thoughts down, at least for a while.

"You don't want to know what I'm thinking."

"Try me," Draco said, both taunt and request. "Listen to what I ask of you; you don't have to manage my feelings for me. It's a big job, but I've got a good handle on it all on my own, thank you very much."

Harry placed his hand over Draco's, where it cupped his cheek. 

"Alright. I was worried about the consequences of my actions last night," he started. "Am. I _am_ worried. I'm so fucking worried, all the goddamn time, and it's exhausting." 

"Tell me," Draco said softly, and Harry was tired enough that he nodded and gave in, and did.

He started with the most obvious—having been noticed, recognized, and the if-this-then-that logic that dictated his worries. And he kept going, spiralling into how much damage could happen when he lost control of himself—how he could cost Draco the anonymity he craved, and what would happen if their friends found out without having been warned. How losses always spiralled out, like dominoes set up in an intricate pattern, how Harry could lose contact with the few people held close, Teddy most especially. How it could cost Draco his job, which he deserved, and the relationship, such as it was, with his mother, which he obviously cherished. And lastly, how he had dragged Draco into his meltdown when he himself was dangerous—broken mirrors and stuttering lights were the least of it. Harry had set things on fire before when his feelings got to be too much when he was sober, and his magic remained concentrated. Twenty-foot curtains aflame were quite a sight, and even if they were easy to put out, he wondered what the damage would be if it were a living being and not merely fabric burning blue, so hot. Before he started drinking to get drunk, he'd caused a lot of damage. Killed all the Doxy's in the house with a blast of wild magic, once, the dull thuds of their bodies falling to the carpet a sound he'd never forget. He'd Apparated himself and a fellow trainee into traffic during physical combat training at the Ministry, and it was a miracle the lorry that crashed into them had only been doing twenty at the time. 

He stopped as lightning split the distant sky, and thunder made its slow roll towards them. Draco looked up, unblinking. The rain above their little island in the grass rolled off an invisible dome above them.

"Thank you," Draco said, "for telling me that."

Harry exhaled shakily. He was empty again and wished for bed. His own would be good—he should go off and be alone again.

"Even if you feel broken, you aren't irreparable, pet. Nobody is. There are people who can help you with the feelings you have that you find too big to talk about."

They looked at one another, and Harry was overwhelmingly thankful.

 _He's not scared of you,_ he thought. _The bugger never has been, and if there was ever a creature who would refuse to listen to reason, or you, it's him._

"I want to make you feel good in my own way. But it's a different way than what you need. I can't talk you through your trauma. You've got to do that work elsewhere first. Does that make sense?"

Harry nodded and rested his chin on his knees.

"I finished the book," Draco said. He rolled his wand and cast wordlessly, the hot breath of a warming charm enveloping them.

"And?"

"And I think that it's a book at all says a lot more about you than it does. That, and you didn't even write it yourself, though it's passably written, so maybe that was a good thing." 

"I'm serious," Harry said. 

"As am I," Draco said. "I think that you believe that sharing some of the facts of your history will stop you from having to face them. To talk about them or to confront what happened. It's not much fun, your childhood."

Harry snorted. "I'm starting to realize that's a bit of an understatement."

"You don't have a strong history of people looking out for you. And it's not history, for you. It's your life."

Harry hummed. He expected more, but Draco only moved to sit closer to him, legs crossed. 

"That's all?"

"Well, that, and I can't believe I wasn't contacted for a quote. I have insights that would really have fleshed out that Sectumsempra scene."

Harry's stomach dropped. "I thought I'd killed you."

"Lucky for both of us, you didn't. Don't look so scared! I'm fine, I'm really fine. I'm just glad you didn't scar my face." He knocked their shoulders together, and a feeling rose in Harry; this was an important moment. That he'd been granted this slip of time where whatever he said wouldn't scare Draco off, and he could just say what he needed to. What he was being asked to.

"I want to talk about things," Harry blurted. 

Draco raised a brow. "I thought we were?"

"There's so much more." Harry felt manic like he had to push the words out before his mind caught up to what was happening and shouted him down. 

"There's so much I left out of the book. I can't—I haven't talked to anyone about anything important since—" he avoided the name, a name he hadn't spoken in years, "—for a long time, and I want to learn how to. Like," he frowned, "like, how I started drinking so I could sleep. I have these dreams. Well, nightmares, really."

"Don't we all," Draco sighed. "Of what?"

"Used to be the war," Harry said. "People dying. Cedric, often. S—" 

_Just do it, do it, do it before you choke on it—_

"Sirius, _"_ he said and stopped short until the rising tide of pain subsided. He rarely even spoke their names aloud. 

"Okay," Draco spoke softly. "I understand."

"No, you don't," Harry stood up, shook his shoulders and arms and hands. 

_Say it, tell him, tell him, and if he leaves, he leaves. Show him the nutter you are, just—_

"Now, they're of you." Harry took a deep, steadying breath. He clenched his hands into fists—he had to get through this. "It's you in that bathroom, and there's blood, there's so much blood. And the fire, the fire might be the worst. I lose you at night, over and over and over again, unless I can black them out."

"Harry," Draco said. He pushed up to stand, a worried frown wrinkling his forehead. "I'm right here." 

He pulled him into an awkward hug. Awkward, because Harry had never really gotten the hang of hugs. Who was to say when they'd gone on too long, and where did the hands go? But Draco pulled him in tightly, and Harry lay his hands on his back where it was comfortable and figured that Draco would signal to him when it was over. 

"That's normal. It's nothing to be ashamed about, and you don't have to deal with them alone. I happen to brew some of the most potent Dreamless Sleep known to humankind, a fresh batch every new moon. I could get you on a regimen, though you'll have to cut back on the drink. They don't mix well."

Harry made a sound of acceptance. Draco squeezed him and pulled away, his hands at each of Harry's shoulders. Harry held his gaze—something about this admission didn't sit right with him.

"Why so much of it?" he asked. "Why do you take it?"

"Hearts. Sleeves." Draco said cryptically. Before Harry could berate him for a better answer, he gave a little eye-roll and added, "I have my own troubles sleeping, obviously. Nightmares. The war. The usual." He rubbed his hands down Harry's shoulders and sat once again, patting the spot next to him on the blanket. 

"I'll help you. You need only ask."

"I'd like that, I think," Harry said by way of acceptance, and they lapsed into an easy silence. Harry sat and then shuffled until he lay curled on his side, his head nestled on Draco's lap. Draco seemed pleased with the arrangement and played with his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead and detangling the snarls hidden within the loose curls. When a hummingbird crossed in front of them, its tiny body of dull brown with a full red throat, Harry wished he knew what it was. 

"I don't know much about nature," he said after a time. "No one ever taught me, and I don't know where to start."

"That's a shame. Narcissa took me on walks of the grounds a lot as a child. She thought the naming of things was critical—Latin first, English second. But it's quite alright," Draco said, "stick with me, and you'll pick it up in no time. The English—having a Latin name and working in potions is more than enough Latin for me."

"Thank Christ," Harry mumbled, and Draco laughed. 

"Rest easy. This is a fantastic spot for birding. Let's enjoy the show a bit."

They sat and listened as the call of schoolchildren dimmed then vanished. As the winds rustled the trees and whipped the grasses into a rustling frenzy.

In a bubble where no water fell, and where a soft warmth permeated the grey day, and amongst all the sounds, there was something like silence for Harry to confront what it might mean to untangle the knot of memories and feelings that threatened to consume him. What that might free him from. What he could become, released from the burden of carrying those heavy, rotting memories around. And what it could mean to have someone there, not to do the detangling for him, but to hold his hand on the way out of that dark place.

Draco's voice, following the explosive cry of something unknown in the distance. 

Quietly, saying, "Cetti's warbler." 

Touching Harry's arm and pointing to a streak of white in the sky. 

"Little egret."

Whispering, "Goldfinch."

"Kestrel."

* * *

That night, Harry settled onto the floor in front of the sofa with Draco sat behind him, large bowls of popcorn in each of their laps. Draco's first time eating the Muggle snack, he was endlessly fascinated, eating it one popped kernel at a time—"Like a nutter,"—Harry told him. He'd lost the battle of explaining to him that though the food was voluminous, it wasn't filling, leading Draco to declare it to be more than enough for dinner, primarily because an entire stick of butter was employed to douse their portions.

"Now, find me a charm to find one of the thriller ones. A film."

Harry crunched a handful of popcorn; he'd moved to the floor to avoid Draco's looks of disgust at his method of eating it. He bent his head back to appraise him. 

"You know we can't charm the telly itself, Draco. Arthur Weasley would kill me."

Draco flicked his shoulder. "You can't be telling me that Muggles flick through all the films at random, in a circle, forever? It's so disorganized. Hasn't anyone explained a schedule to them?"

"You mean like the T.V. guide?"

The little mark of a frown appeared. "What is T.V.?"

"Oh my god, Draco, you went to uni. Didn't you make any friends who could have explained this to you?"

Draco glared. "Of course, I had friends. We were—study partners—and therefore, we studied together. The telly isn't studying. It never came up." He popped several popcorn pieces into his mouth, one right after the other.

Harry unfurled and stood, trying a quick " _Accio_ remote," and was surprised when the plastic stick zipped into his palm from the side table across the room.

Draco made an exasperated face. "What do you think you're going to do with that thing? You can't charm it to show you what you want to see either—trust me, I've tried."

Harry looked to the little remote and was flooded with affection for the feckless pureblood. It all felt a little too good to be true, which meant the bad thing was just around the corner, stage-left, waiting to snatch his happiness.

"I'll go, you know. Whenever you ask me to."

He looked to Draco, watching him expectantly. He'd get exasperated with Harry, eventually. It was essential to give him these outs, Harry decided. To let him know that he wouldn't have to feel guilty once he grew bored with him.

Draco sighed, pinching his fingers on a paper napkin. Greasy fingers and Malfoy's didn't mix well. "I've never felt incapable of telling you to get out. You can go whenever you want, but for now, I want you here." 

Harry swallowed the fear rising in him, walked over and dropped back onto the floor. He drew his wand and attempted a few spells before landing on one that electrified the device in his hand, causing Draco to gasp when Harry pressed the ON button, and the box flicked abruptly to life.

"We'll start with the basics," Harry said, demonstrating with the remote. "The box is a telly, and telly is short for television. T.V., you see? It's an acronym."

Draco hummed, a hand rubbing at the side of Harry's neck. He rested his head on a calf. 

"Now for the advanced classes. This is the—"

"Telly-wand," Draco said, his fingers rubbing soothing circles into Harry's skin. Crunching followed. 

Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing. "Yes, exactly. Telly-wand. Some people call it a remote, or a clicker, or what-have-you. Telly-wand is a great name, Draco. You're a natural at this."

"I know," he said. More crunching. 

* * *

Harry watched as rivulets of water flowed down the windowpanes, closed against a night of early darkness.

It was strange, being in bed while still clothed. Even if it was only an oversized t-shirt and pants, it was still considerably more fabric than he'd ever kept on once they'd entered a bed together.

"This shirt is a large," he said, scrutinizing the long-worn tag, "in what world are you a size large?"

"I take a medium, firstly." Draco flipped back the covers and slipped in beside Harry, wearing another overlarge shirt—his in black, Harry's in horizontal stripes. "And maybe I enjoyed a slightly baggy fit when I purchased it."

 _"Slightly_ baggy?" Harry needled him. A low worry settled into his stomach, like a poisonous fog. He wanted Draco; he always wanted Draco, the feeling like a low-grade fever. He'd been watching his arse jiggle from under the hem of his shirt as he'd prepared for bed, had admired his long, muscular legs, and thought about sucking fresh bruises onto his collarbones and neck. But the night before loomed large in his psyche, and he couldn't trust his body not to react with adrenaline and fear, even to those things he wanted. 

_Especially to the things you want_.

"I'm a medium across my shoulders, and I have a long torso. I'm not a small, I'm—can we not talk about it?"

Draco fiddled with the things on his side-table, arranging them in neat, right-angles to the edges. His face was flat, emotionless, which meant he was expending a lot of energy hiding an emotion.

"Sure," he said. It was an easy topic to drop, though he couldn't fathom why it needed to be dropped in the first place.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to be snappish," Draco said.

Harry shook his head, forced a tight smile. "Don't be. It's nothing; I only wondered."

Draco rubbed at his eyes and shuffled down under the covers. "Time for bed, I think. We have about a half-hour before the Dreamless Sleep kicks in, but it's good to try to beat it to the punch. _Nox._ " His words cast them into the same near-blackness as the night before, only the streetlights' soft glow illuminating the room.

Draco lay on his back and closed his eyes, his breathing slowing and levelling out. His face tilted slightly on his pillow, facing Harry, and Harry turned to look at him, drinking in his features. He tried to get their breaths to match, an old trick he used to use to try to fall asleep back at school.

_In, out. In, hold, out._

Facing Draco wasn't a good idea, he realized, as it made him want to touch him. To taste his lips and make his breaths come raggedly, not smooth. He tentatively moved his hand to rest on top of the blanket, rising and falling with each of Draco's long, sleepy breaths.

"You're staring," Draco mumbled after long minutes, not opening his eyes.

"Yeah." Harry let his hand drift under the blanket, as though it were making the journey of its own accord until two fingers traced the outline of Draco's hipbone. Draco gasped, and Harry shushed him.

"Keep your eyes closed," he said. Draco nodded once and licked his lips.

"You don't have to. We don't have to—really."

"I know," Harry said, savouring how Draco's stomach went taut under his touch as his hand wandered up underneath his nightshirt. He smoothed it back down, slowly, until his fingertips were sneaking just under the elastic of his pants. 

"I'd like to, though. I like touching you. Can I?" Harry whispered.

"Yes," Draco whispered back. "I like how you touch me, too."

Harry hummed and smoothed his hand, palm-down further inside Draco's pants. He found his cock soft, just starting to harden at his touch. 

He shuffled forwards until his knees nudged Draco's leg and propped himself up on an elbow. Draco's breaths were already speeding up, shallower than before, and this simple fact made him smile. He dropped Draco's cock in favour of pulling down the blanket to reveal his long torso, the concave bowl of his stomach just asking to be tasted.

"Can I use my mouth?" Harry asked. Draco made a low sound in his throat and nodded, eyes pinched shut.

"Of course, pet. I love your mouth. You have the most incredible mouth. Those red lips of yours—"

He moaned as Harry shifted down the bed and leant over, nose pressed into the spot where his ribs met in the centre and placed a kiss there. He sewed a line down, achingly slow, breathing in the scent of Draco's skin. It was everything to him, indescribable—warm, and deep, and alive.

"Tell me about my lips," Harry said. His heart was racing, but so was Draco's. He could feel it when he pressed his kisses into him, and as he reached his pelvis and the thatch of tight blond curls there, he stopped, shuffling down, pushing the blanket out of the way. He felt powerful like this, in the dark. Unseen, he had nothing to worry about. 

"That time in the pub," Draco said, breathy, as Harry curled his fingers into the waistband of his pants and pulled them all the way off. He returned to lay between his legs, belly on the mattress and nosed at his sac. Draco swallowed hard as Harry stilled.

"I couldn't stop looking at your mouth. It was driving me insane— _you_ drive me insane. That grin you gave your friends with those lips, and I just knew they'd look so good around my cock."

Harry smiled a private smile and lapped at the underside of Draco's cock, fully hard now, and Draco whined, one hand twisting into the sheet and the other grasping at his chest, just over his heart.

Harry's fingers wandered. They pushed up the hem of his shirt and traced the ridges of his ribs, drawing gasps, and then lower. They dared at long last to trace the scars like ribbons, crisscrossing his stomach. He traced them with his tongue, occasionally squeezing at Draco's shaft and tugging at it, mixing all the sensations together. Where he was soft, or scratchy, or hard. Harry brushed his knuckles into the hollows next to his hipbones, and when the pad of a finger hooked into his navel, Draco hissed.

"Careful, there," he said as Harry withdrew the finger. "Gives me a weird feeling in my cock."

"Oh, really," Harry breathed. Draco raised one brow, though his eyes remained pinched closed, and Harry could laugh at how expressive he remained without having a subject to look at.

"Yes, really." 

"Tell me how I can make you feel better," Harry said. He skated his fingers over Draco's cock, made it jump. He wanted to stick his tongue in the slit to lap up the drop of precome collecting there, but he was going to abide and do as Draco asked. He rested his cheek against the soft skin of Draco's abdomen and waited for his reply.

"You could eat me out," Draco said. "I'd love that."

"And then what," Harry said, and Draco huffed a soft laugh, his prick jumping as his stomach muscles tensed. There was a line of precome, clear and thick like spit that connected the tip to his body, and Harry's mouth watered. He knew he'd get to taste it—eventually.

"Do you want me to go into detail?" he asked.

"Yes," Harry said. Draco licked his lips, shifted up in the bed, bringing Harry a few inches lower against his body. 

"Your mouth goes on my arse," he said plainly. Harry rolled his eyes and thought of the necessary charms, enjoying Draco's surprised gasp as the magic rushed over and into his body.

"I know that you wank," Harry said. "I meant—particulars. Requests."

"Well," Draco said, taking a long, stuttering breath as Harry nipped at the inside of his thigh, teasing his way lower and lower still. 

"The request stands that your mouth goes on my arse. What you do after that is truly up to you."

Harry pinched Draco's side, which only served to make him wriggle and swat at the hand that had done it.

"Alright, alright. I want to finish on those ruddy lips of yours."

"Yeah?" Harry asked. Draco nodded, seemingly knowing that Harry was watching.

 _He can always tell when you're looking at him,_ Harry realized. _He can probably hear you watching. What do your thoughts sound like when you're looking at him? What does he know about how you feel about him that even you don't?_

"Yeah," Draco swallowed thickly, "yeah, and I want to watch as my come spills into your mouth. Onto your mouth."

Harry hummed, and Draco opened his mouth again, to say more, perhaps, but shut it when Harry used one hand to nudge his sac up and out of the way and slipped his fingers, fingers he'd already sucked into his mouth to wet, up against his furled hole, and that gentle press took Draco's breath away. 

It was nice, Harry decided, like this. Without being watched, he took his time, slowly using his fingers to explore inside of Draco, experimenting with the curl of one, eventually two. Of scissoring them and making Draco shiver. He pushed up onto his elbows and seized Draco's prick from his hip, where it was only somewhat hard and took immense pleasure in getting him hard again with short, firm strokes of his hand, combined with the wet heat of his mouth until it was big enough to choke on. 

Harry's cock had thickened, but he ignored it with reasonable ease. He didn't want Draco that way, didn't want to fuck him. Not tonight. He wanted to explore him, learn his every mole and freckle, soft spot, and the places that made him sigh, so that's what he did, and Draco was a very willing participant.

"Oh," Draco breathed out when Harry at long last brushed his hole, a tentative lick.

He repeated the motion with more pressure. "Good?" he asked, and the shaking of Draco's body told him that he was nodding again.

"Perfect, pet," he answered by pulling his knees up, taking his shaft in his own hand and leisurely pumping it. "Would you please do it again, and about a thousand more times?"

Harry laughed, low and throaty, and did as he was asked. He understood after the first few tentative licks how intoxicating this was. How fun it was to make this place where the soft, curled hair of Draco's body disappeared, slick. To taste him, whatever _he_ tasted like—he'd never be able to explain it. Musky and a little bit like salt, the way skin tasted, but more than that too. Like the way hot stones on a riverbed smelled—indescribable. 

"Oh." Draco's thighs started to quiver when Harry dared press his tongue inside, exploring the tight ring of muscle for how much give it had. "That's, that's—oh, _fuck—_ " and Harry knew he'd hit the jackpot when Draco started babbling. His free hand reached down, long fingers combing into Harry's fringe until he held his head at just the angle he liked with a loose fist.

 _More, like that,_ Harry thought as loudly as he could, and Draco keened and pulled harder, the echo of his own thoughts in Harry's skull.

_Yes, pet._

Draco didn't bother trying to keep still—his hips lifted from the mattress, arse clenched around Harry's hand when he dipped his fingers back inside of him. 

"Can you—your mouth again, please—"

Draco panted, and Harry stilled, looking up his body's long line to the pained look on his face. He was close, and it thrilled him to know Draco well enough to know that now. 

"On my cock—"

Harry bent down, using one hand to hold Draco's prick up and the other wrapped around his hip, mouth poised at the crown.

"Look at me." He breathed on the head, and when Draco opened his eyes, Harry gave the crown of his cock a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss, and Draco's sated sigh was the sweetest sound Harry had ever known.

Harry wrapped his lips around his cock and sucked down, eyes never leaving Draco's. He started bobbing his head and removed his hands. He liked it more like this—literally no helping hands to take care of the inches at the bottom, no chance to suck off for a short break.

Harry moaned between lips stretched wide and thought as clearly as he could—

_Make me take all of you, please. I want to, so badly._

_—_ and Draco nodded. He tightened the hand in his hair until it pulled at his scalp and pushed him down, pulled him up deliberately, and down again, lower still, until he was held at the base, cockhead nudging for entry into Harry's throat. 

"You're so bloody hot, pet. You make my fucking toes curl," Draco ground out. 

"Can you take the last of it?" He was panting now, and Harry knew it wouldn't be long. Harry moaned and nodded as much as he could, and Draco rolled his hips up, Harry's throat constricting around the intrusion of his cock into his throat. The feeling was electric—a cold sweat broke out across his skin, and still Draco pumped his hips, fucking his mouth so carefully, and under a minute like that, Draco's back arched off of the bed.

 _"Fuck_ , I'm going to come," he cried out, pulling Harry off so that only his tongue connected to his prick, which he fisted quickly with his free hand, eyes locked onto Harry's the whole time.

"Thank you," Harry whispered as Draco came, the first thick, hot spurt across Harry's nose and cheek. He pressed his tongue to the underside of Draco's cock, groaning appreciatively, and felt more flood his mouth, which he kept obediently open. Draco had kept his promise; he painted Harry's lips with white stripes.

"Say it again," Draco said, voice breaking around the words, like watching himself come into Harry's mouth was a sweet torture. "Repeat it, and say 'sir.' Would you do that for me?"

Harry swallowed and opened his mouth again, his thick lower lip catching on the underside of the leaking tip of Draco's cock. They were both panting, chests falling and rising in a rapid beat.

"Thank you," Harry said, tongue exploring the underside of his lip to lick up an errant strand of spunk, "sir."

The crinkles around Draco's eyes were obvious, even in the shadows. Harry only enjoyed them for a moment before his head tilted backwards, and he slumped, exhausted, back into bed, the hand in his hair loosening.

Harry settled beside him and wiped some of his come from his cheek, more from his chin with the heel of his palm.

One of Draco's hands rested on the outline of Harry's prick, hard inside his pants, a wet spot growing—but Harry took the hand and pulled it away, held it in his.

"No," he said hoarsely. He coughed into a fist and placed the hand back onto Draco's chest.

"No?" Draco said. "Are you sure?"

"Positive," Harry said, smiling. "I just really wanted to. But that's all—for now."

"Alright," Draco said. He stripped out of his shirt and flicked his pants from the bed, which incited Harry to do the same. 

_No sense in not sleeping naked. You can just say what you want, and that's fine. He wants you here, sex or not. Believe that, for his sake, if not your own._

"You've become more hirsute since we met," Harry said as he slipped down under the covers once more. This time, Draco curled up behind him, his arm hooked around Harry's waist, the other snaked under his pillow to pop out the other side, clean off the mattress.

"Hirsute?" Draco teased.

"Don't act so surprised that I know _words_ , Draco," Harry grumbled. "You'd think you'd give me a harder time for saying we 'met.' We didn't meet, we—"

"We met. I like 'met.' It implies a new beginning," Draco said with finality. Harry sighed—he liked 'met' too. He just felt silly, sometimes, for thinking it.

"And you're not wrong, oh observant one. I've been really letting my bush grow," Draco said.

"Is that so?" Harry asked, and Draco hummed, pulling him in more tightly.

"'Tis. I used to be one of those practically hairless gays. When we met, I still was. Thought I had to, to be attractive."

"You'd be attractive covered in mud," Harry said. "Actually, you'd be _very_ attractive, covered in mud. Scratch that—I can't think of scenarios where you're not excruciatingly attractive."

"Enough of that," Draco groused, but he was only half-pretending that he didn't like it. Giving him compliments was like watering a thirsty plant.

"So the story goes that once upon a time, I looked the stereotype of a twink. And it was easy to lean into, so I did, even though it meant that nearly everyone also assumed that I bottomed—"

"Which you do," started Harry.

"—which I do, but I rarely wanted to, but I also didn't know _what_ I wanted, so I took what I could get."

"Which was..."

"Which was poppers and blowies in clubs and a Muggle boyfriend who threatened to break up with me when I 'hit puberty,' so he put it—"

"Excuse me, _what_?" Harry twisted around to look at Draco, and he rolled his eyes, shrugging it off.

"I know, right? I was—how do I put it?—inattentive to red flags at the time," Draco said.

"Who was he?" Harry asked. Draco pushed his shoulder until they returned to their earlier position. "Only if you want to talk about it. We don't have to talk about it."

"No, it's fine." Draco's fingertips explored Harry's front as he spoke, pinching his nipples gently and smoothing over scars and ripples of muscles, hair and skin alike. Harry hadn't come, but he felt the drowsiness that came with an orgasm enveloping him as the Dreamless Sleep started to kick in. 

"He's nobody to me now, but because I can tell you'll be a crup with a bone with this—his name's Noah. He's Muggle, though he knows about magic."

"Is he a squib?"

"No. His father is a diplomat from America, and I suppose our little island was put on a list of countries that was slightly dangerous to visit for a while there, what with our war going on and all. Politicians abroad at the time were briefed, along with their families."

"Did you really date?" Harry tugged Draco's hands more tightly around him. He was curious, though the tug of sleep also threatened to pull him under any minute.

"We did, I suppose. I wanted to pretend we weren't, but we were. It wasn't good, though. It was good for maybe six months, as good as it could be dating a very wealthy American."

"Is that awful?" Harry tried and failed to hide a yawn. Draco chuckled, the vibrations reverberating through him. 

"Mmm, it's crass. He's so bloody American—a gym rat with very loose morals. His mother was a Japanese model—gorgeous, you wouldn't believe—and she gave him an absolute complex that he's a god on earth."

Harry hummed. "Oh, so a wealthy Japanese-American diplomat's son, whose mother was a model, who is probably seven feet tall and built like a Greek god. Got it. Nothing to worry about there."

Draco squeezed him. "And you, Harry Potter, the saviour of our world, philanthropist playboy with green eyes that melt ice and lips that can make can make me come on-sight." Draco punctuated his sentence by grinding into Harry, and he gasped _. Fuck,_ but how Harry wanted Draco. _Like this,_ he thought, _just not now._

"If you're fishing for compliments, you'll find I'm giving them out much more freely these days," Draco added, planting a kiss on Harry's neck. "Anyway. There was a long shitty period of time, and then there were the six months where I kept trying to break up with him, and he convinced me we didn't need to."

They lay in silence for a while, but Harry's curiosity still had an itch left to be scratched. 

"One more question?" he asked.

"You can ask as many as you like," Draco said, but Harry shook his head. He really was tired, and he didn't want to pry too deeply. 

"Why was it so shit?"

Draco hummed and left a long pause. Harry could practically hear him collecting his thoughts when he did this, now.

"I think he really liked a version of me and valued what that version gave him. And part of that was someone who would stop short of nothing to make him happy, even when it didn't make me happy, and that's how I ended up participating in more threesomes than I care to count—more than my fingers and toes twice over. And it took Pansy sitting me down and making me admit that I hated them, that it felt like I was watching my partner cheat or was being fucked by people I had no interest in, and that I didn't have to do any of it. At all."

"That doesn't sound like you," Harry said. 

"How so?"

"You're strong-willed," Harry said. He was sliding off to sleep and knew it, and was glad, so glad to be doing so like this, in Draco's bed. "You're good at sticking up for yourself." 

"Maybe that's the version of me that you know," Draco whispered into his neck. "I've been known to be a pushover and a coward, but I'm glad you think I've changed my spots."

"Stripes," Harry mumbled. "If you were an animal, you'd be a stripey one."

Draco huffed a laugh and pressed a kiss to the spot behind Harry's ear.

"Goodnight, pet."

"Goodnight."

* * *

**Notes:** Not a lot to say this time around. I hope you're enjoying the things in life that make you happy, like reading your favourite fics rather than doom-scrolling during these odd and trying times.

Next chapter should be up by **November 13**.

As always, many thanks for your comments and kudos. 

xx


	13. Both Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brunch and brisk exercise.

* * *

**Sunday, November 2, 2003 - Night**

"Surely, you noticed that time?"

"Oh my god, Mione! For the last time, he is not checking me out."

"Mate, here's the thing though, here's the thing." Ron touched Harry's shoulder, leaning in meaningfully. "He is."

Harry sunk his head into his hands, still on the friendly side of exasperated, if only just. The night had started out on a jovial note, the entire Weasley extended family and what had to be all of Molly Weasley's living friends crammed into the Leaky Cauldron for her belated birthday celebrations. The venue's rental was Harry's gift, an extravagance that was an unfortunate requirement for him to be able to mingle without worry with those he loved in a public place. It had the added benefit of making all the attendees feel like stars as their photos were snapped on the way from the Apparition point to the front doors. Harry would never forget giving a masterclass in the 'casual wave and demure smile' to Ginny and Molly a couple years before, his effort leaving everyone else in attendance at the time in stitches and tears. Evidently, Harry was a bit of a natural in front of the camera, even though he felt like a nervous wreck most of the time. Ginny Weasley, on the other hand, was an unmitigated disaster.

Since the war, birthdays had attained a particular level of importance within the family, and Molly's was no exception. All of her children were in attendance with their partners, Harry and Charlie, being the notable exceptions to the rule.

"You don't want to believe us, Harry, but we saw him with our own eyes! He watched you walk all the long way outside, and then he looked back at the door three times before you walked back in." Hermione was effusive, a rare second glass of wine in her hand staining the edges of her lips purple and touching her movements. " _Three_."

Harry took a sip of butterbeer and shook his head. A headache loomed, and the bar was overcrowded. He wished he were at home instead, or outside, or at a table closer to an exit, but he had to hold on a little longer. He liked being here, he did. He just had to work for it a little harder than most to realize it.

"Listen, he may be looking, I'll give you that, but it's only because he recognizes me. That's it! I'm—don't give me that look, Ron—I'm being honest! If I were some random bloke in the bar, he wouldn't give me a second glance."

"Mate, that's so off-base. What if he likes short blokes? I like Mione, at her size."

"Are you calling me short, Ronald?" came Hermione's retort. Ron rolled his eyes.

"I'm not calling you _short_ , I'm saying you're shorter than me, and I like that in a—in you. I like your height. On you. Not with women, in general, just your height, for you, is exactly right."

"It is exactly right," she said, taking a hearty sip of her wine. She pretended not to notice when Ron raised his eyebrows at Harry, his _That was a close one_ , unspoken but just as obvious as if he'd said it aloud.

"You're selling yourself short, Harry." Hermione was just as studious at ignoring his signs of discomfort at the topic as she had been at ignoring Ron's close call. "You're a catch, honestly, crazed hero-worship aside. Blokes do look at you, and you never catch them at it. Muggles too—remember the last time I took you shopping? It's like you're blind to the fact—"

"I'm seeing someone."

The din of the bar filled the silence at their table that followed this statement. Harry picked at the label on the butterbeer bottle, creating soggy confetti on the tabletop. Draco would hate it, would end him with a look. He put the bottle down at the thought and slid his hands to his knees. 

"What?" Hermione asked.

"Sort of," Harry hedged. He couldn't walk the whole statement back now. But he could attempt some damage control. He wasn't drunk, and yet the word-vomit had come.

"Shut up, no you're not," Ron shoved him by the shoulder and raised his hand, catching a server's eye and signalling for another round. "You're trying to get us to stop setting you up, but you don't have to lie about it."

"I'm not lying!" Harry looked up to their incredulous faces. "I'm dead serious."

"What's the mystery man's name, then?" Hermione asked, settling in, both hands wrapped around her glass. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to sniff out the lie. Harry had done a very silly thing to pique her interest in his love life.

"I, er. I can't tell you that. Yet," he added, at her raised brow. "I'm waiting until I'm sure it's serious."

"So he's the reason you weren't home all weekend?" she asked.

Harry met her eye and held it. A spike of nervousness rose in him that his friends had popped over unannounced and hadn't found him. He'd increased the chances of them popping over with the intention of meeting his mystery lover, now. Well, more than his lover. That he'd spent the night at Draco's—two nights, in fact—and that he hadn't stayed for the sake of an orgasm, what was that? That was serious, that was _dating,_ that was long-term relationship stuff, as far as Harry was concerned.

Bollocks. 

Sometimes, Harry felt as stupid as he pretended to be. This was one of those times.

"Yes. I had a bit of an, er episode? On Halloween?" He scratched at the back of his head. "And he put up with it. With me. Put my head back on straight. "

"Episode?" Ron tried to keep the note of worry from tingeing his voice but did a terrible job of it. Hermione looked at him and touched his hand, and Harry had to swallow the spike of anger that arose in him.

 _Stop it. It's unfair, you holding that over them. It's not their fault._

That spontaneous moment, how she knew a touch would calm him; Harry craved that. To be able to touch Draco in public and not have it be a headline, not be political; how could he explain how jealous he was of his friend's easy relationships, outside the public eye? 

"I drank too much. The ball, it was fine, but I went looking—never mind that, but I was thinking about my parents, and—"

"Awe, fuck. We totally forgot," Ron started.

Harry waved him off, "No, don't worry about it, I'm fine—"

"Oh, Harry, we did forget, though."

"If you want to talk about forgetting, how about the fact that I forgot your birthday this year?"

Hermione scoffed and waved a hand, the bangles at his wrist jangling. "Sending the card a day late is hardly forgetting, Harry, and I didn't even do anything for it this year."

"Sod off!" Ron interrupted, to her bemused smile. "Tell that to my bank account; we didn't do anything this year."

"We went for dinner, and it was extravagant, and I'll never forget that you tried a dessert involving hay mouse for me, Ronald dearest," she placated him before turning her attention back to Harry, who wanted more than anything to sulk in self-pity for longer than she'd allow it. "Harry. Stop beating yourself up about it. And I see right through that change in subject." She lowered her voice, eyes swiping left and right to determine how private their conversation remained among the throng of friends and family, "Really though, are you alright? You'd tell us if you weren't right?"

_Not a chance in hell._

"I'll be alright," he said, his nodding helping him believe it too. "I kind of made a fool of myself, but he got me through it, and we...talked."

"Really now," Hermione said, her eyebrows showing what a surprise this was to hear. 

"Yep, real, actual talking."

"Feelings and everything?" Ron said. 

"Feelings and everything. He's, uh—he's done a lot of therapy, and he's right that I need it. Need someone to talk to that isn't a friend, or—or him." Harry sighed, raked a hand through his hair, green eyes meeting blue and then brown in turn. His friends looked impossibly hopeful, rapt for his next words. "I'm going to find a Healer I like, maybe one that's also a psychologist, or a psychiatrist or—I don't know. Just go back to it. And cut back on this," he wagged the bottle for emphasis. 

Hermione touched his hand, and when he looked at her, her eyes shone dangerously.

"Don't, Mione," he warned. "You start crying, and Molly will start, and then we'll all be fucked."

She sniffed and cleared her throat, doing an admirable job in blinking them back. 

"That's great. That's really great. I didn't—we—" she looked to Ron, who blanched and looked from her to Harry in quick succession, "er, I mean—"

"It's fine. No need to beat around the bush. I'm not going to explode at you two for noticing that I've become a bit of a—"

"Drunk?" said Ron.

"Lush?" said Hermione

"—I was going to say alcoholic, but yes, thanks, all of the above."

"If he's so fantastic, why the secrecy?" Ron cut the question in quickly, casual as-you-do, which Harry recognized as an interrogative technique. "You know you can tell us anything. You can trust us."

"And I do." Harry vanished the label-gunk pile and sat back, rarely so thankful for their server to arrive and deposit fresh drinks and fresh bowls of Bombay mix on the table. The seconds were precious—more than enough for Harry to come up with a reasonable answer to Ron's question.

"I don't want to bother trying to introduce him around if it's nothing. It's only now getting serious."

"How long has it been _not_ serious?" Hermione asked while pretending to pick through the mix for her preferred coconut bits. 

Harry smirked. "I'm not helping you develop a timeline and stop prying!" Hermione rolled her eyes, but Harry noticed Ron ease back into his seat, no longer on high alert about Harry's beau. 

"I'm not even sure we're dating-dating, you know? I've never called him my boyfriend." 

Harry blanched at the thought of introducing Draco as his boyfriend. At the possibility. Of how on earth he would help him with his jacket as the two of them entered the Leaky on a night like tonight, watch him wish Molly a happy birthday and clap Ron on the back as though they were old friends. Or chat up Arthur, who openly feuded with his father. Or George, who still bore the scars of the war for all to see. How long would it take for the spectacle to wear off, for _that fucking Malfoy boy_ to become _Harry's boyfriend_ and not have people bat an eye anymore? How would he make small talk with members of a pureblood family his own had openly mocked as blood-traitors?

_You know how to bite your tongue at offside comments. But to ask Draco to do the same? You can't do that, and it's impossible to get him to stop talking—how would he perform under the spotlight of dating the Chosen One? Being called out as the Golden Boy's Death Eater lover, accused left and right of evil deeds?_

Harry was spiralling, he knew it, but as he looked around the room at his chosen family, he wondered for the first time how was it was _really_ supposed to work. If Draco were there at his side, the two of them would wave to the cameras at the end of the night before they Apparated—where? Where was home? Could they date without rushing to move in together? If they did and broke up, who would move out? Harry didn't want to live in Grimmauld forever, but at least there, their privacy was secure. Would Draco's flat be safe from the media or rabid fans—god, he'd get death threats from the very beginning—and what of his career at the Ministry, his—

"Harry? Earth to Harry? Woo-hoo, are you alive in there?"

"Yeah," he said, shaking his head to clear it, "for now, at least."

* * *

**Thursday, November 6, 2003 - Morning**

Draco's wand's vibrations went off, sending the wood gently rattling about on his side table. He mumbled the incantation to stop the alarm and turned to pull Harry in close, contented sounds escaping him. 

After a few minutes, he sighed as he did every morning. It was the signal that he was gathering strength to get up properly.

"Are you awake?"

"Yeah."

"How'd you sleep?" Draco asked. His question was punctuated by the tightening of the arm draped over Harry's ribs. 

Harry scrubbed a hand over his face. He'd been awake an hour already, waiting for the thin morning light that was still yet to come.

"I slept like the dead," he said. He smiled. "It was total blackness. Your potion really works."

"Of course, my potion really works," Draco grumbled before added airily, "I dreamt that I won buckets of money at a casino." 

He kissed the knob of Harry's neck and squeezed him tighter. "You were there. The coins kept coming, and I was worried about how to package them all to get them home."

"Is that a standard sort of dream for you?" Harry asked, throwing damp covers back from his sweating body. The two of them together were too much for Draco's down duvet—they'd have to switch to something lighter if they stood a chance of sharing a bed as often as they had been lately.

Draco sat up. "If dreams can be such a thing as standard. Mine change all the time."

"Last night was a dream," Harry said. He rolled onto his back, keeping his eyes tightly shut. "The lack of nightmares is as good as for me. If no-one else dies, that's a great night in my books."

"I think in most people's nightmares, they're scared because they're the ones who end up dying." 

"Why would I be scared of that? Dying isn't even the worst thing that's happened to me." Harry meant it as a joke, but it came out flat. He'd slept well but had somehow come out the other end sticky, aching, and nauseous. 

"Christ, and I thought I was morbid," Draco breathed.

Harry frowned as his body made its various needs apparent. "I need a shower, I think. I feel terrible."

Draco plucked his wand up and cast _Tempus_ , the numbers casting a faint glow onto the ceiling above.

"Does it feel like a hangover?" he asked.

"Yes. But I'm also starving. But also, yes."

Draco patted his hand. "That's withdrawal. What you need are crêpes."

"Excuse me?"

Draco was up, pulling on a dressing gown of liquid-looking silk in green so dark as to appear black. Harry had snooped and discovered that he had a different one for every day of the week, which were colour-coded by day. The days also determined the colour of underpants he wore, which Harry had said was the work of a lunatic, and Draco had defended as the work of a burgeoning genius.

"Trust me," he said, lingering in the doorway, "we're having crêpes for breakfast. With fruit and coffee and mountains of sugar, and there will still be plenty of time for a run and a shower before I have to leave for work."

"How do pancakes figure into any of this?"

"Your body misses the sugar it was getting from all that swill you've been drinking," Draco said, matter of fact. "Carbohydrates. I love that word. _Car-bo-hy-drates_ ," he enunciated with a little smile. "You'll be staying, yes? For breakfast, at least?"

Harry blinked. "I don't have any plans."

Draco grinned, a flash of white teeth. "I'll pop over to yours later, and we can take a look at your calendar together. We'll draw some up."

"Some what?" Harry asked blearily, rubbing his eyes.

"Plans," Draco said. "You said you didn't have any. I assure you that now you do."

* * *

"Come on, old man!" 

Draco's jibe was doubled by the fact that he was jogging backwards, the better to taunt Harry with his second-place performance.

"You're older than me," he huffed, but Draco only shrugged, smirking as he turned back around, feet wetly slapping the pavement beneath him, propelling him ever forward. 

"Then this should be easier for you, shouldn't it?" he called back.

"By a _month_ , you're older than me by a flipping month!" 

Draco only laughed. His characteristic locks were tucked away inside a beanie of grey wool while a few darkened strands were stuck, wet against the back of this neck. Harry had been staring at them for the majority of their run, as Draco had offered only two options: a run at Harry's pace, which would leave Draco un-satiated and testy all day, or a run at his pace, which would cost Harry the use of his legs for up to four days but would be better for his training in the long run. Harry hadn't been sure that Draco's pace was such that he needed to worry about it; Harry had been proven unequivocally wrong.

"Last one inside does the washing up!"

Harry shook his head and pushed on. A bright, crisp day was breaking, brisk winds turning their breaths to white plumes of smoke as they'd run down the tree-lined Oakley street and past the Albert Bridge Gardens, tidy and neat, sparse with early-morning risers like themselves milling about. Harry knew he was in trouble when Draco led them not left, for a nice jog to the botanical gardens, but onwards, across the Thames and towards Battersea Park. Draco ran ahead and jogged in place at locations of interest, starting up again when Harry approached, casually describing the artist responsible for such-and-such sculpture that he detested, or to ensure that Harry took in the tea-roses—"You have so much time to truly appreciate them, the rate you're going,"—or to point out the children's zoo, intimating that it could be of interest to young Teddy, perhaps.

In truth, Harry was trying hard, but not overly so. He couldn't beat Draco at this, his own game, but he also didn't want to. It was much more pleasant to watch him run. His gaze was up, ears in line with his shoulders, entire pose relaxed and elegant as he cruised familiar paths. They'd settled on Notice-Me-Not charms—dangerous, as drivers and fellow pedestrians literally didn't notice them coming—but less strange than glamours, which gave Harry a queasy feeling when he looked to the people he cared about while they wore them. He didn't want to look at Draco and see an almost version of him. He basked in his wide, shining smile of victory, and the electric pink of his cheeks from exertion and cold mixed.

"What—"Harry heaved, having pushed the final block to meet Draco at the front doors to his building. He stood there, pulling a foot up behind him by the opposite hand, stretching not just until his trainer was level with his arse but up, up, until it was nearly in-line with his shoulder.

"What washing up?" Harry managed, doubling over to huff in much-needed oxygen for his screaming muscles. "You already did all the dishes from breakfast?"

"Of the loser, silly," Draco chided him. Harry frowned, and Draco only smiled wider, swapping to stretch his other hamstring. "In the shower."

"Oh." Harry stood, feeling suddenly much more alert than he had. He hadn't really been thinking of the shower as anything other than utilitarian, but the sparkle in Draco's eyes told him all he needed to know.

"Oh, yes." Draco pulled a key fob from his pocket and beckoned at the glass doors.

"Why don't we Apparate up?" Harry asked though he followed him over.

Draco motioned to follow him over into the lobby, all granite tile and large, tropical plants. He was surprised that the building didn't have a doorman, though a manager of some sort sat behind a wide desk to their left, chuckling through a phone call. He acknowledged Draco with a wave, and Draco smiled back, picking his way around a _Caution! Floors slippery when wet_ sign. It was mundane—well kept and subtly posh, and so thoroughly Muggle that Harry could hardly believe that this was where Draco Lucius Malfoy actually lived.

"I thought I could bring you in through the front door, teach you my unit number. Not that you'll have much use for it, but you never know."

He pressed the button for the seventh floor as they entered the elevator and waited until the doors slid closed to push Harry into the wall. He gasped from surprise as the cold of the metal was pressed into his damp back.

"And I wanted to feel you up in this contraption. It always gives me a thrill."

Harry laughed, accepting the nips to his throat.

"Noted. I'll be sure to bring you for dinner at the Shard."

"Because it's so tall?" Draco aligned their bodies, insinuating his thigh between Harry's legs as he kissed him. Harry's body responded with a jolt to his cock, and Harry prayed that they could make it to Draco's flat before he got fully hard, as Lycra leggings and tiny football shorts didn't leave much room to the imagination where his cock was concerned.

"Because maybe that way we'll have a chance in hell of finishing before we make it to the top," he said to Draco's delight, judging by his snorted laughter.

Harry learned many things on their way to the shower, Draco's flat number being the least of them. He learned that Draco had memorized the exact moment of sunrise and that the wide east-facing windows of his kitchen allowed for a perfect view as the clouds over the city were tinged pink by the early rays. He learned that the exhilarated runner's high he felt, Draco felt too, maybe doubly-so and that it could be parlayed into frantic, erotic energy without a thought. That Draco wet with sweat smelled delicious—slightly piney, like burning sage—and tasted even better, sharp salt when Harry finally had him naked in the shower, kissing his chest and ribs and over, nibbling experimentally at the spot under his armpit, tongue tasting the wet hair there with a devious smile on his face.

"Catch," Draco said, tossing a square of soap into the air. Harry did, expertly, giving it a deep inhale. Sweet almond and intense orange oil.

"I'm in love with your soap," Harry said, careless of the implications. Draco's smile faltered for a half-second before he regained his composure.

 _You have to be careful,_ Harry chastised himself, _that word can't be bandied about like nothing_.

"I'm waiting, pet," Draco said, stepping back under the spray. Harry huffed a soft laugh, approaching him and rubbing the bar in circles at his chest. 

"You'll have to forgive me—this is my first time giving someone else a shower." He clenched his jaw after speaking to keep his face even, not wanting to give in to nervous laughter. Draco pretended seriousness too, though his cock was so hard that it traced his abs' outer ridge.

Harry motioned for Draco to raise his arms and soaped under them, shuffling closer, pretending that it wasn't an electric feeling when their cocks mashed together. Draco bit his lip and watched as Harry slathered his stomach and sides, an embarrassment of suds.

"Don't miss any parts," Draco breathed, and Harry nodded thoughtfully.

"I wouldn't dare. Open up a little bit." He took to his knees and continued his path down Draco's left thigh, knuckles brushing up against his sac, and that was the touch that was Draco's undoing. He growled, fingers tightening into the hair at the crown of Harry's head.

"Pet, you're killing me," he said, but Harry was determined to draw the moment out. He soaped with his right hand and scrubbed with his left, flannel in hand. He took extra care with Draco's feet, getting in-between his toes, and all the way back up his other leg until he had nowhere left to explore but the crevice where Draco's thighs met with his arse cheeks, and when Harry dragged the flannel along those lines, Draco's groan was throaty and exasperated.

"I'm serious; I fucking need you."

"What about your back?" Harry tinged his tone with misunderstanding like he had no idea that Draco's cock had been leaking precome for long minutes, like his grip in Harry's hair hadn't tightened until it was near-painful. 

He stumbled up to stand, and Draco tried to grab the soap from him, but Harry was faster and pulled away, leaving Draco grasping at air. He tried again, and the smile on Harry's face spread as the look on Draco's turned roguish.

"Give it here. I haven't all morning to play with you."

"You haven't?" 

Draco growled and lunged again, and this time Harry was ready for him and spun them, pulling him in close. They wrestled under the hot water, too slippery to gain a proper grasp on one another until Draco pinned Harry by his arms against the wall and kissed him hard—too hard, almost, teeth clacking. It was a momentary distraction, but it was enough for him to gain the upper hand, and his whispered _Incarcerous_ pulled a gasp from Harry as his wrists met against the shower wall above his head and were pulled upwards by the snaking cords of the spell.

"Give me the soap," Draco ordered. Harry considered for a moment giving an impetuous _No_ , or dropping the bar instead, but Draco's body was slammed against his and Draco must have sensed his hesitation to hand over the power of the situation because he cupped Harry's bollocks in one hot palm and gave them a gentle squeeze, and Harry's eyes rolled back into his head.

_Give in, give in, he'll make it so good for you if you can be good—_

"Now." 

Harry's breath was a tremor as he loosened his grip on the soap, and Draco was quick to take hold of it. Stepping away from Harry left him strung up, so hard that his cock ached, without a single point of contact.

When they looked at one another again, Draco's eyes were dark, and lust was so clearly painted on his face that Harry could hardly believe that this was the look that Draco got when he looked at _him_ , but it was real, right there, a look Harry would never forget.

Draco moved fast, stepping close and smoothing one finger under the twisted rope at Harry's wrists, checking the tightness.

"You can undo the spell anytime, you know the words," he said into Harry's ear. Harry nodded, blinking fiercely under the spray of water that doused them both, causing large droplets to fall heavily from Draco's eyelashes and nose, the bottom of his full lips.

"Don't nod, yes or no."

"Yes," Harry breathed. Draco flashed a look at him, kissing him, his mouth hotter than the water rushing over them.

"Yes, what?" he asked, twinging one of Harry's nipples enough to make him yelp. He licked his lips—he was panting, now, ready, so ready for whatever Draco wanted to give him.

"Yes, sir."

Draco placed his hands on either side of Harry's heaving chest and dug his fingers in subtly, just enough to make Harry suck in a surprised breath. He smiled slowly.

"Exactly. Now we're turning you around."

Harry hesitated for a moment, long enough for Draco to notice. He leaned in close, the better to speak the words directly into Harry's ear and make him shudder with want.

"I want to get in-between those beautiful legs of yours. I'm not going to fuck your hole, but I am going to come all over your back, and then I'll wash you clean too. Is that alright with you, pet?"

Harry was too surprised to breathe, but he somehow managed a _"Yes, sir,"_ and allowed himself to be turned around, each touch charged. He had to grip onto the braided rope doubly when Draco's fingertips spread soap across his shoulders, each swipe of his lower back enough to make him gasp as though he were being whipped and not gently rubbed at.

"You like that, do you?" Draco murmured, nudging Harry's legs together by tapping at the outsides of Harry's feet with one of his own, pulling his hips back until he was bent over at an easy incline, feet planted one directly next to the other.

"Must be ticklish," Harry said, eyes trained on his own cock, thick and dripping, a long line of precome leading from it all the way down to the porcelain below, droplets of water following the trail. Draco hadn't even intimated that he might touch it, and somehow the idea that his hard-on would be ignored until Draco had taken his fill of Harry was an erotic thought on its own.

_You'll come when he wants you to, not when you want it. Relax, and it'll happen in time._

It was a shock when Draco soaped his arse cheeks and down the line of his crack. His slippery hands gripped each of Harry's hips, and he leaned in, his prick pressing insistently at Harry's lower back, making him shiver.

"Steady," Draco whispered, leaning in for a lick under Harry's ear, and that was enough to drag him under to a place where everything was touch. Harry clenched his eyes shut as Draco kneaded his arsecheeks and burrowed his cock in between them. On a slow slide downwards, Harry could feel the fat cockhead slip past his hole, so sensitive that he made a little sound to feel it happen, and onwards, through the tight, wet channel of his thighs until the slide stopped when Draco's prick nudged at his sac.

 _"Fuck,"_ Harry gasped, delighting at the feeling. He could see the appeal, could hear it too, in each of Draco's prolonged moans.

"Make it tight now— _fuck me, Jesus Christ, that's good—_ yes, just like that—"

Draco held on to one hip with a firm grip as he languorously rolled his hips, the other hand wrapping around the front of Harry's throat. It forced Harry into a precipitous angle, the sort of position that guaranteed to blow out his lower back, and he was so grateful for it. To be given the feeling of utter lack of control, and every element of being fucked, all his concentration going into his fingers, arms quivering to hold him up, and the incline of his back, the better to present his arse to Draco, and the trembling in his thighs, already desperate for a breath from their morning's exercise, exerting themselves once more, squeezing a tight as they could to give Draco a slick channel to fuck.

"Does it feel good to be fucked like this?" Draco ground out the words, his movements coming fast and hard, the previous rolling pace replaced with sharp, wetly punctuated slaps of his hips against Harry's arse.

"Yes, sir, _fuck_ , yes, sir—"

Draco growled and changed the angle suddenly, rutting upwards instead of down so that he slid his thick cock between Harry's arse cheeks, ready to come into the dip of his lower back. Harry wanted the feeling desperately; he could only imagine how good it would feel, the hot, heavy come landing on his skin, and his words came out garbled.

"Both hands, on my—please, use me, yeah—"

Draco understood, peeling his fingers from around his throat and using both hands to push the supple skin of Harry's cheeks together, and on a groan, he was coming, the heated splash a relief to the both of them unlike any orgasm they'd ever shared.

"Oh god," Draco repeated, leaning his forehead into Harry's shoulder as the spurts slowed, shaking as his orgasm quaked through his entire body. "Oh, god, oh, god."

They held there for a long minute until Draco knelt down behind him.

"Stand straight, pet," he said, and Harry obliged. "Turn around. And I want you to watch," he added, and Harry did, a high-pitched sound escaping him as Draco suckled onto the tip of his long-neglected cock.

Draco hummed, sliding lower down his shaft, and Harry knew that the order to watch was the one that would end him. He needed to close his eyes and turn away, to let his head fall back and groan, to have some relief from how hot it was to see Draco, his own eyes shut, looking like he was slurping up a frozen treat on a hot day as he expertly sucked Harry's cock.

Harry pulsed his hips, Draco taking it well. He held on to one of Harry's thighs, the other hand braced against the wall as he took it. He took every inch Harry gave him gladly, humming his happiness around his prick.

Harry didn't want to control himself, but he also did. He wanted to fuck Draco into oblivion. Wanted to march him back to bed and tell him to take the day off—the week—so they could do this forever. He wanted to be taken by Draco, over and over again, and then have Draco take care of him, just like this. Harry slid past Draco's slippery lips and gasped when Draco started bobbing his head and swirling his tongue around the head of his cock, and he knew it was all over when Draco dropped the spell holding his hands above his head, and Harry ran his fingers over the slick stands of Draco's hair, his other hand pushing against the wall of the shower, and that was when Harry came. A surprise, almost, but more of a release. He relinquished control for a second, acknowledging how deeply his want for Draco went, and like a wave lapping in at the shore, his orgasm built and broke until he was gushing into Draco's mouth.

Draco took him easily, sucked him until he shuddered, reluctantly pulling back. Harry watched the movement of his throat, mouth ajar at how sensual that act of swallowing was.

 _I belong inside you_ , he thought, looking Draco in the eye, and he knew Draco heard that thought by the quality of his smile when he pulled off. And then Draco was standing, rubbing his wrists and massaging his hands, down to his fingertips, gone cool from being held high and out of the hot water for so long, tongues in each other's mouths, bodies pressing against one another's with casual ease. There was laughter and then comforting silence as they completed the necessities of a shower.

"Next time, I want to wash your hair," Harry blurted as they towelled off. Draco made a light sound, tossing Harry a wide-tooth comb that he believed might detangle some of his more unruly curls, turning a boar-bristled brush to his own locks.

"I like this talk of next time," he said. Harry took a deep breath, wincing as he tried to pull the comb through the first knot of many.

"Maybe every time, if I'm lucky," he said, and Draco only swallowed, looking away to hide the obvious surprise on his face. He was blushing—Harry could see it even through the fog lacing the mirror.

"You plan on losing a lot of races, is that it?" he asked, and Harry laughed.

"If this is what losing feels like, I have no intention of winning."

* * *

**Notes:** To all the new readers—hi! This counts as fluff, right?

Very glad that you've joined in the fun—starting works-in-progress is always tough (what if *gasp* _the author never finishes posting the effing thing?!_ ) so honestly, thanks for taking the leap and sticking around while I'm still posting.

Short chapter, because I had to chop up what was becoming a bit of a monster chap. Title from the incredible "Not the One" by Empress Of.

Next chapter no later than **Friday, November 20** , but now that my city is back in lockdown, probably sooner than that :) Stay safe, be well, and thanks for the kudos & comments, I really love reading all of them! xx


	14. Yours/Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A date, a walk, and difficult conversations.

* * *

**Friday, November 14, 2003 - Night**

"I'm not wearing that."

"You told me to dress you, and that's what I'm doing. Don't go sending mixed signals now."

"I didn't tell you to dress me. I said that if you wanted me to _dress sexy_ that you'd have to be more specif—"

"Please don't ruin this before we've even started."

Draco tossed the jacket to Harry, knowing full well that after years of snapping his hand out to catch the tiniest thing whizzing past him, he'd have no choice but to catch it.

"Are you pouting?" Harry asked. He was clearly insane, poking a sulking Malfoy. 

"Just put the bloody coat on so we can go. It's a Muggle club. No one will recognize you anyway—I can guarantee it. Now hurry up before I decide to leave without you and dance up on some miserable, miserly old man who hates fun, which would make an entirely acceptable replacement for you."

Harry took the jacket from the hanger and shrugged it on. It was not unlike one he already owned, though the details were shinier and oversized. Flashy, more of Draco's style than his own. He really was being more of a stick in the mud than he meant to be, and if he was honest with himself, a drink would go a long way to dampen his simmering temper. Draco had met him in the middle on several things, allowing him to wear his preferred black Nikes and altering a pair of moderately distressed jeans and a t-shirt to pair with them. That he found Harry sexy in an outfit so simple felt revealing, but Harry knew better than to voice this opinion out loud.

On the other hand, it was clear to anyone with sight that Draco looked downright carnal. The hard planes of his body modelled the white shirt he wore perfectly. On second glance, it revealed itself to be layered mesh, and Harry loved that the tiny pebbles of his nipples were visible, kept hard from the friction with the shirt's fabric. He'd slicked his hair back in a way that was reminiscent of schooldays, though this iteration retained some movement, a lock of it falling into his eye when he wasn't careful. Shined oxfords, a pair of black jeans with rips in them that Harry had balked at the cost when he asked if he'd bought them like that, and a leather belt and jacket completed his look. 

Harry followed him to the bathroom and watched as he applied gloss to his lips, dotting it at his cheekbones and rubbing it in lightly, swipes of iridescent glitter bringing out their dizzying heights. Draco hadn't noticed him, and Harry watched as he turned left to right, judging the figure in the mirror. He straightened up as though he were a marionette, sucking in his stomach and rolling his shoulders back and down. Something wasn't right, though, and he puffed out a breath on a frown and let his posture sag, as though he found the man in the mirror somehow lacking.

"It's pretty," Harry said. Draco caught his eyes in the mirror, looking for a brief second soft; open. Scared, even, of judgement. And then he smirked, and the moment was lost. Harry leaned into the doorframe, refusing to drop his gaze. "You look very pretty, Draco."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Draco scoffed, turning to him. His gloss smelled like frosting, and Harry stole a kiss to taste it; him. "Ready?"

"Take me away," Harry said, and they were off.

* * *

They Apparated a few blocks away from their destination, allowing Draco the opportunity to smoke on the way there. Harry walked, head bowed against the drizzle that was near-constant these days, his lapels flipped up against the breeze. Draco walked, cat-like, his lit cigarette held pinched with the long end of it cupped under his fingers, his only acquiescence to the fact that it was raining at all. Harry loved watching him walk outside like this, and as they approached the club, he realized how much he liked watching other men watch Draco walk too, their eyes dragging along, following him down the block.

Draco flicked his stub and held his hand out for Harry to take, pulling him in close as they came within feet of the front door, and Harry didn't hear what he said to the bouncer, barely paid attention to the dim lighting or the fact that they were descending into a basement bar because Draco was holding his hand and it made Harry's heart hurt, how terribly he liked the feeling.

"Potter?"

He came-to at the bar, both Draco and the bartender looking at him expectantly.

"Oh, sorry. What?"

"Are you drinking tonight?" Draco asked.

"Er, um. Yes. Only two, though, that's my limit."

Draco gave him a curt nod and turned, "He'll have a gin and tonic, tall, light ice, extra lime, thank you. You can put him on my tab." They waited to collect their drinks, and then Draco had his hand at the small of Harry's back, escorting him over to a table near the side of a stage. Their shoes pulled against the checkerboard dancefloor, tacky with the spilled drinks of the night previous.

"Where are we?" Harry asked as he draped his jacket over the back of the banquet and took a seat. Draco sat across from him, slouching in a way that projected comfort and ownership of his space. The room was dimly lit with a low ceiling that looked like bedrock, dark wooden tables and seating of maroon velvet upholstery that gave it the feeling of a cabaret or a cave, out of time. The music pulsed out a monotonous beat with a man speaking about losing his edge on the recording, and this had generated about a dozen people dancing to it. Couples and a few small groups of friends littered the tables that edged the room, wreathed in blue smoke from their cigarettes and a smoke-machine that spewed it in puffs from the stage where the DJ stood, her head hung over a table strewn with electronics. It wasn't what Harry had been expecting by a long shot.

"It's a club," Draco said nonchalantly, though he smoothed his shirt down over his stomach as he did it. His tell.

"But how do you know it?" Harry asked. He took a sip of his drink and had to keep from groaning with how good it felt. He put it down before the urge to give it a nervous gulp took him and fixed to listen instead. The determination was there to pace himself and keep to his word, to try his absolute best to make a nice night of it.

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, it's a _gay_ club," Draco said. Harry rolled his eyes.

"As it so happens, the sea of eyes glued to your arse on our way in alerted me to that fact, thank you," he said.

"Your powers of observation never fail to astound me," Draco retorted.

"I used to come here before uni and get absolutely thrashed. I'd set up shop in the toilets and make friends by giving away lines that would pay most people's rent." He snorted at the memory. "It was silly but fun, though, even under all the drugs."

"What drew you to it?" Harry asked. This was going fine, he thought, taking another measured sip. This was going great, considering what it was that they were doing.

Them. In public, no glamours. Fucking _holding hands_.

"Well," he answered, tipping his head back and forth as he raked his mind for an answer, "there aren't any doors in the toilets, so it was rather easy to find someone to polish my knob."

"Quaint," Harry said into the table.

"I like the music they play," Draco said. "That's the truth. I shouldn't have been so crass, forgive me," he added, plucking invisible lint from his shoulder. "I'm nervous."

"What's there to be nervous about?" Harry asked, meeting eyes that looked up at him from under a lowered brow. Draco's pupils were blown in the darkness, melting into irises dark as slate, pools of wet stone.

"I'm taking _the_ Harry Potter on a date, you see," he said.

Harry hummed in answer, reaching across the table's short distance to brush Draco's fingers with his own.

"Well, I'll have you know that Harry Potter gets a bit nervous in places like this," he said gently. "Where it's a little dark, and when he doesn't know the floor plan of a building, and its escape routes. Though the lack of a crowd is refreshing."

"The fire exit is to the left of the stage, before the loo," Draco said, "and it's good to know that even the mighty saviour gets nervous over trivial things sometimes."

Harry hummed again. "Yeah, well, he's also never been the one taken on a proper date, you see, so he's not entirely sure how this goes."

Draco caught his lower lip in his teeth as the song changed. The lighting swapped out red and green for blue and blacklight, making his teeth glow in the dark.

"What's it like, dating Harry Potter?" he asked.

Harry took his hand, heart beating in his throat as the bass pounded ever louder, and pulled him up to stand. "Let's find out."

They danced, or at least he tried to, and Draco laughed openly at his attempts. He took him by the hips and attempted to slow them; to show him slightly less embarrassing ways to move his arms. Harry eventually had his second drink, but he savoured it, slowly, just like how he watched Draco savour the cigarettes that burned up during their occasional breaks out into the bracing night air. They chatted with single men that eyed Draco or them in combination with open want and with an old couple that enjoyed including them in their playful bickering. They sweat and talked and talked and talked, knees grazing one another's under the table, mouths meeting for frequent, hot, open-mouthed kisses in the near-darkness of the club, like all the words and things in-between the kisses themselves were just filler. Harry forgot, for long moments, who he was. He could be anybody, but whoever he was, he was the luckiest man in the world because he had Draco Malfoy looking at him like _that_.

"If there's one thing I've learned about you tonight, it's that you're untrainable in the art of dance."

Harry sat heavily after a last round on the dancefloor and grinned, raising his hands in a gesture of defeat.

"What can I say? I was born with two left feet," he said. "The real question is: when did you become so good at it?"

Draco raised a single eyebrow, the lights pulsing across the room, bathing him in red and blue, red and blue, the syrupy tones colouring his hair.

"Where everyone studies, of course," he said. "At school."

"We went to school together, and they never once taught us how to dance the way you do."

"You're right," he said, eyeing the empty spot on the banquette next to Harry and moving over to occupy it, long legs outstretched under the table. "So we can hear each other better," he said by way of explanation for the move.

"I went to a dance school," he continued. "My mum enrolled me in ballet when I was five. It was one thing in a litany of activities, you know—duelling practice and Little Quidditch League, and—"

"You took ballet?" Harry interrupted. Draco nodded, playing with the straw in his drink.

"I did. Do, sometimes. I drop-in when I can and go for a contemporary class on Sundays." Harry thought about it, about to respond when Draco cut him off, "When you have Weasley family dinner. That's why you haven't noticed."

"You really do know my schedule, and I've never bothered to learn yours," Harry said. He turned to look out over the dance floor, his mouth a grim line. "That's not right. I'm sorry, I—I could have asked, by now."

Draco raised a hand dismissively. "Don't start brooding about it."

"I'm not—" Harry started before he realized that he absolutely had been able to tailspin into a marvellous brood. "Tell me more, then," he said instead, "I'm listening now."

"There's not so much to say. Narcissa has a soft spot for anything French, so she enrolled me, and I went for a few years. The trick was that I didn't talk about it often at home, and Lucius didn't pay a lot of mind to what kept me busy. There came a time, though, when she couldn't pick me up, and he had to for some reason. The jig was, so to speak, up, when he came a little early and saw me dancing the girl's parts." He winked. "No more ballet for Draco after that." 

"I'm glad you could take it up again," Harry said, taking a sip of water. This was his new trick, learned from Draco—the act of occasionally drinking water while in an establishment that served alcohol. It was tedious but worked remarkably well to keep him from getting sloshed.

"How'd you do that, by the way?" He sat up straighter, putting down his drink to better face Draco. "Navigate the Muggle world? How'd you go from living at the Manor to...drop-in dance class in Chelsea?"

"Camden," he corrected, sticking out his tongue at Harry's eyeroll. "Well, it wasn't a straight line," he said. "First, it required a breakdown of catastrophic magnitude."

"Are you ever going to tell me about that?" Harry asked. Draco flexed his hands, contemplating his nail-beds.

"Maybe. But that's not first-date talk, so let's smooth over that point tonight."

"That's okay by me," Harry said, a fizzy feeling alighting in his stomach at the words _first-date_. Gods, he was such a suck.

"It was a combined effort by Pansy and Blaise to get me out of the manor and into rehab. Blaise went and shacked up with a half-blood a year out of school if you didn't know, so he became the resident expert on all matters Muggle for Slytherin alumni. I owe them a lot," he said wistfully. He stared into his drink, and Harry sat back, let him collect his thoughts. "I owe them so much. I was at my absolute worst—nobody wanted to be around me back then—and he'd come to visit every day, explaining what credit was and why Muggles are so obsessed with little bits of parchm– paper, little bits of paper with numbers on them." 

Draco leaned in, brushed the back of Harry's hand with his fingertips. 

"Don't tell anyone, but he Obliviated about half the staff of the NHS to keep me in care."

Harry watched, transfixed as Draco laughed at the memory, clearly bittersweet.

"I went into that place with a basic cover story, that my parents were part of a cult, and I'd had home education and rarely ever made it out into public."

Harry mulled that over for too long for Draco's tastes.

"What kind of cult?" he asked, at last.

Draco scoffed. "You're supposed to tell me what a wild and bizarre cover that is and ask me how ever did I get them to believe me?"

Harry couldn't help but shrug, avoiding the bit of napkin Draco flicked at him. 

"But, I mean, that's actually quite a good cover story. You sort of were. In a cult, that is."

Draco preened. "I know it's good, isn't it? I thought it up." He sipped his drink, little pink tongue on the short red straw and Harry _knew_ he knew how he looked when he did it because the dimple in his cheek showed up and gave him away. He loved being watched by Harry—bloomed under his gaze.

"What kind of cult?"

"I told them a bit about blood purity, and they taught me the term _white nationalism_ , so that kind. It helped that they found my name funny to start off with."

"Jesus," Harry grimaced. Draco echoed his look.

"Yes, it was really _yikes_ all around. Lucky for me, I actually knew a fair bit about the Muggle war of 1939; otherwise, I would have been _quite_ fucked."

"How's that?"

Draco finished his drink, pushed it to the side. "A whole bunch of Malfoys died in it, being idiots in France—Grandfather Abraxas loved to drone on about it when I was little, and I absorbed all his nonsense like a sponge. Anyway—once they bought that lie, the little ones were easier to come by. I won't say it wasn't hard work, enrolling in school, but it's easier to do the reading and research when you haven't got much in the way of friends to distract you from it. Muggles think I'm eccentric—"

"You are eccentric," Harry added under his breath. This earned him a swift poke to the ribs.

"Ow! I'm not apologizing when it's true."

Draco snorted. "Just because something is true doesn't mean that you have to say it aloud."

"Like how you're so beautiful that sometimes it makes me breathe funny?"

If Malfoys could go purple with embarrassment, Draco would have turned the colour then. As it turned out, he could burn a brilliant pink, which was evident even under the strobing coloured lights.

" _Potter_ ," he said, jaw agape. "Would you _please_ stop saying things like that?"

"Why?" Harry teased.

"They're alarming," Draco said.

"They're true," Harry said, and then Draco bit his lip, and Harry closed the distance between them, heart thudding as it had the very first time they'd done this. Kissed.

They pulled apart, and he was ready to say something spectacularly stupid when a shadow was thrown over the table.

"Fancy another, gents?" the voice asked.

Draco didn't look away from Harry's eyes as he responded, "No, thank you, I think we'll be going." He fished out a credit card Harry could hardly believe he owned from his wallet and handed it over.

The voice said something Harry didn't care enough to hear and left as Draco leaned in to kiss Harry again, scooting closer so that they sat hip to hip, thigh to thigh. He had enough decorum to separate before the bartender returned, taking the little plastic tray and pen given to him. Harry watched him, slightly dazed that Draco was such a functional person in everyday society. Which, of course, he was. He had to be. Anything he did, he did well.

"I love this place," Draco said conversationally, scrutinizing the bill, "a bit slow for a Friday though, isn't it? What's the bar normally pull at the weekend?"

"This has to be our slowest night since, god, who knows." The bartender scratched at his throat, looking over the mostly empty space. "Probably made less than half what we would normally. We'll be lucky with two or three thousand quid. Thinking of getting into the bar ownership game, are you?"

Draco smiled, signing with a flourish. "Not at all. Just curious." The bartender was called away by the couple a table over, so Draco left the receipt on the table.

"Let's go," he said, and Harry followed him all the way up the staircase to the front door before he realized he'd forgotten his own coat in a daze.

"Be right back," he said, and Draco waved him off, an arm pulled tight around his torso against the cold.

Harry exited the club with his jacket retrieved and spotted an elegant line leaning against the wall across the street, cigarette dangling from his lips. Harry walked over, shaking his head in disbelief.

"You're totally insane," he said once he was within speaking distance. "A two hundred quid tip! What are you on?"

"Fuck," Draco said, frowning. "You weren't supposed to see that."

"But what are you doing? Do you think it's somehow your job to keep the place open?"

Draco grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him around the corner, frustrated. "Come on, let's go this way. It's not too late for gelato, I think."

"Draco," Harry said, wrenching his hand free.

"It is my doing!" he exclaimed. "God, I was trying— _ugh_."

"Trying to what, you absolute nutter?" Harry asked. Draco stared at the sky, exasperated.

"I know you don't like crowds, but I wanted to take you somewhere fun, somewhere we could hang out and not be ogled or have someone spit on us, and I really like this place, so maybe I came here earlier and set a moderately impregnable Notice-Me-Not charm to keep anyone except people who _really_ wanted to go inside, out."

Harry stared, not piecing the plan together yet. Draco gave a great exhalation and continued his diatribe. 

"Maybe I did that but didn't want the staff to lose out on much-needed revenue just because I wanted to show you a good time. And it's terribly gauche to go brandishing money on a date, _especially_ a first date, and what do you care about fortunes anyway, so I tried to keep it a secret." Draco huffed, piqued. "Honestly, it's a drop in the bucket; I hardly spend anything at all these days."

"Draco," Harry said, a warm feeling spreading in him as the object of his affection kicked insolently at the pavement, marking up the thin layer of sodden snow that had fallen while they were inside.

"Don't make a big thing of it," he said.

"Draco," spoken softer this time, as he closed the distance between them and placed his hands on either side of his face, forcing eyes trying to avoid his to look at him directly. 

"Take me home."

"What?" he said.

"I said, take me home. I want to go home with you."

Draco's forehead was crumpled, unsure. "Where's that?"

"As long as you're there, it's good with me," Harry said, and he swore he saw the side of Draco's mouth twinge with the threat of a smile as he Apparated them away.

* * *

It was only kissing, but Harry could hardly trust his legs to keep him upright as he staggered back until the wall caught him, something sturdy in the assault on his senses.

They hadn't spoken a word since they'd entered the flat. A trail of clothes dotted their path; a shoe kicked off behind the front door, its twin on the stair. They'd entered the bedroom shirtless, and Draco's hands worked quickly to divest Harry of what remained of his clothes. He gasped as the cold metal of Draco's wristwatch pressed into the skin low on his stomach, as his hand slid past his trousers and underwear both to cup his swollen cock.

Harry pressed the crown of his head into the wall and squeezed his eyes so tightly shut that he could see sparks as Draco fell to his knees, pulling down the fabric that got in the way, even helping him out of his socks before he took Harry into his mouth. It was the same in so many ways as it had been before, but something felt different. It made Harry's chest tighten to think about it, to try to quantify how though the sex between them had never been without meaning, that now it felt like they touched one another with purpose. Draco sucked him like he needed it.

In time they fumbled over to the bed, where the waxing moon threw weak light—just enough to make out the island of neat white sheets. Draco's nose pressed insistently at the crook of Harry's neck while a hand coaxed his thighs open. He moved over him, pulling legs wider, the gold band of his watch warming as his hand roamed Harry's body, finding the crease where his leg connected to his body and holding firmly until finally, he dropped his head and started exploring with his tongue until he had Harry panting, drawing surprised yelps from above. 

"It's like every time, I forget how much fun this is to do to you," he said to himself, his laugh warm when he blew on Harry's exposed hole just to watch it contract at the cold blast of air. Before Harry could complain, firm hands spread the globes of his arse as Draco's tongue unwound him with a barrage of flicking licks. 

"What are you doing to me?" Harry panted, looking down at him after an unimaginable amount of time. Draco popped up, lips full and rosy, radiantly happy as he rested his chin near Harry's hip.

"Anything I can to make you look at me like that," Draco said, and then he was moving, straddling him, rubbing his wet, leaking cock against Harry's and doing things with his teeth at his neck that made him shiver. Harry squeezed his eyes shut again, face twisted to the side, and he wished for only one thing, and as he thought it, it came into being.

"Would you look at you," Draco gasped, and it was so surprising that he said _you_ and not _that_ , that it wasn't the feat of wandless magic that had caught his attention. Harry opened his eyes to both of them, staring back from the full-length mirror conjured by his subconscious to reveal them to themselves.

Draco dragged his fingernails along the ridges of Harry's ribs, the muscles contracting at the touch.

"Careful!" Harry warned, laughter in his voice as he stared, transfixed at the image they made in the mirror. He could take in the whole scene this way, and his eyes drank it in. How Draco's long pale limbs caged him in, and the way wisps of hair curled behind his ear. How good Harry's body looked under him, compact and sturdy, reams of muscle taut under his olive skin. His hair a mess on the pillow, black as oil between Draco's long fingers; his lips swollen, eyes heavily lidded. Dishevelled and so very, thoroughly fuckable. He could admit that in this context, with the way Draco looked at him as proof, that perhaps he too was beautiful. 

"Ticklish," Draco said rather than asked as that same hand ghosted in-between them, out of sight between Harry's legs and then he knew why as he gasped, arching his back the way Draco liked as they found their way inside of him.

"Look at you," he repeated, and Harry did. Watched himself, mouth open, panting. How taken he looked when Draco tugged at a fistful of his hair to force his throat to elongate. 

"Beautiful," Draco whispered, and Harry allowed it. Watched as his whole body went tight when Draco added another finger to stretch him, pumping his hand leisurely, like he could do this all day, like it wasn't obscene. How obvious it was that he needed to be Draco's. How he already was.

They didn't say anything for a long while as Draco focused his attention on the man below him rather than the one in the mirror. As he knelt, held Harry's legs together, gliding his cock so it passed slowly over his hole each time before sliding through his thighs, rubbing his bollocks on the other side. 

Harry was beside himself already, and his garbled sounds made clear how good this _almost but not quite_ fucking felt. 

"Make it tight, now," Draco murmured, and Harry squeezed his thighs together obediently.

"Like that?" he asked, and Draco nodded fervently, one arm wrapped around Harry's thighs to hold him just so and the other around the top of his shoulders, hand cradling where his skull and neck met. Draco was the holder, and Harry was held, like this, folded into whatever shape he was needed to be.

"Yes, pet, just like that, you like that, don't you?" Draco murmured, and Harry lost track of time, drinking in the words of gentle encouragement Draco doted on him. This was how he took Harry apart until it was happening, Harry pleading into his ear to be filled.

"Try," he said, stilling Draco when the crown of his prick slipped past his hole. Draco looked ready to say something, and Harry opened his mind, thinking his thoughts loud and clear, so Draco would not just hear them, but believe them.

 _I'm here,_ he thought, _I'm here, now, and I'm so happy to be with you, and I want this. I want to try again with you._

"Are you sure?" Draco asked aloud, and Harry nodded, breathing to keep the panic at bay.

"Yes," he said, and so Draco tried and tried again. They stilled, and he lined up and pushed, lightly, close but not quite able to breach the space with his cock as he had with his tongue and fingers. 

Harry braced himself for a third attempt, muscles throughout his body tense at the expected pressure. Draco didn't push at all this time. He stopped with the cockhead slippery, feeling fat against the entrance to Harry's body. He licked the outer shell of his ear.

"It's not something to overcome, pet," he whispered, "it's a letting go."

Harry inhaled deeply and emptied the air from the bottom of his belly to the top of his chest. 

_Relax. I've got you,_ rumbled through his mind as Harry finally did, sinking into the mattress, hips rolling open, and when Draco pressed again, rather than grit his teeth, he breathed and was stunned to feel the breach into his body.

"Yeah, that's it. When I push, it'll be easier if you kind of push too, just a little. Let's try now," he said, and Harry gasped. Even though it was a push from Draco, he could feel the squeeze too, how his body pulled Draco in.

"Is that okay?" Draco asked. Harry made a sound, higher than he meant to, and nodded fervently.

"It' s—I'm surprised. It was a surprised gasp. It doesn't hurt."

"Alright." The tension that went out of Draco's shoulders belied how good that explanation made him feel, and they stayed like that, connected in this new way. 

"Tell me when I can—"

"Yeah, I'll just—a second. I just need a second." 

It wasn't so different than what Harry thought it would feel like, but at the same time, it was distinctively more.

"You can move," Harry said at last, and it was only when Draco circled his hips that Harry fully comprehended that Draco was _inside him_. It was his perfect cock he stretched around, and the feeling was electric.

" _Ungh_ ," Harry moaned, eyes rolling back in his head. "M—more, more, please."

"Fuck, you're perfect," Draco murmured as he started rocking back and forth, measuring each thrust. They set a rhythm, slow and smooth, and Draco pulled Harry's hips up with an arm around his lower back, his knees at Harry's waist on the mattress; Harry hadn't previously been able to fathom what it would be like to be able to feel Draco so profoundly from inside.

"How does it feel?" Draco whispered, shaky breaths punctuating his words.

"So full," Harry managed, arching his back, leading his sticky cock to rub against the washboard hardness of Draco's abs, a twin pleasure to the one growing inside of him, and he was lost to it. It was slow learning for his body and mind to work as one to welcome the feeling of fullness, even as it threatened to be too much. Draco thrust carefully, and in the mirror, Harry watched as extreme pleasure curled his toes, pleasure that he meted out in waves, not giving in to the urge for frenzy.

"Ah, stop," Harry whispered when it got to be too much, and Draco stilled immediately. Harry hardly recognized his own hushed voice that then urged him on again.

"Yes," he panted, squinting at the mirror when a droplet of sweat dripped into his eye. "Just like that," he said and cried out when Draco snapped his hips, buried almost entirely inside.

"More?" he asked, and Harry made a broken sound, hands squeezing at Draco's bare arse to come in, come _closer_.

"All of it," he said. He licked at chapped lips when he felt a drop fall there, and the brackish taste that was Draco, slick above him, on him, in him, the salt of it made him moan. 

"Yours," he breathed as Draco slammed fully in.

Draco growled at the word. "Mine," he said, slanting his mouth over Harry's in a hot kiss. He tugged at his hair, and Harry could feel Draco's cock pulse, bulging inside of him when he squeezed his arse around it involuntarily from the gesture. 

"Mine," Draco said, doing it all again; Harry's neglected erection sputtering precome as the move pulled a sound from his core. Pull, moan. Squeeze, bulge. 

"Yours, all yours," Harry said, and Draco was grinding and barely pulling out anymore, pushing as deep as he could, snaking a hand between them to fist at Harry's cock, stiff against his belly. Draco's hand pulled frantically, jerking him to the point of no return. 

"Would my little pet like to come?" he grit out, and Harry keened as those words turned the low warmth in his spine into an electric storm, and rather than responding with words, he came. It was shocking to come with Draco's prick inside of him; rivers of spunk shot between them, dotting his abdomen, as high as the dip where his collarbones met. All the while, his body clamping down around Draco's perfect cock, strong as an iron rod inside of him.

"Fuck," Draco whispered. His movements became jerky and fast, and he dragged his wet hand over to Harry's hip, his own orgasm now clearly unstoppable. Harry braced himself with a hand at the headboard, watching between their bodies as Draco disappeared into him again and again. 

"Harder," he said as Draco's breaths came quickly, first in panted bursts from his nose and finally huffed from his open mouth. Draco could fuck him through the mattress for ages, he realized, given a chance. 

"Yeah," Harry egged him on as Draco's bollocks slapping against his arse became audible as his fucking became eager and without reservation. 

"You need—both hands—" he said, "to _fuck_ —give it—me— _yes_ —like I'm—yours—yes— _fuck—"_

When Draco came, he made a sound like a sob—face buried in Harry's shoulder as he filled him, sliding over and over into him, wet, hot, enrobed. He slammed into Harry as he milked it, the thrusts making Harry giggle as they brushed up against nerve endings inside of him, a feeling he'd never felt before. It took a long while for their breathing to slow, longer still for Harry to loosen his grip from around Draco's back, having clutched him tightly to grind through the explosion with him.

"Fancy giving a bloke a break?" Harry said, and Draco snorted into his chest, his body hanging limp, dead weight. The gloss he'd so carefully applied earlier had melded with his sweat, and sparkles blinked from every sharp, damp point on his face when he looked down at Harry, nose to nose. 

"I could stay inside you forever," he breathed, but a few seconds later, he pulled away, nudging Harry immediately into a half-moon to embrace, and placing his softening cock against the wet crease of Harry's arse as he coddled him.

"Yours," Harry mumbled, the sweet promised blankness of sleep turning the edges of his vision black. Sticky, satiated, and so content that he would be asleep within moments.

"Mine," Draco said, placing a careful kiss to the spot where collarbone met shoulder. He waited until Harry's breathing evened and slowed as he fell deeply into sleep to whisper again. "Mine to keep."

* * *

When the first date became a second—a film ostensibly about the internet that Draco felt the need to talk about, in minute detail, any chance he could for weeks to come—and then a third—though no one at the Quidditch pitch knew it was a date, as Harry sat a row ahead—things didn't substantially change, but Harry could track them shifting all the same. The tiny "x's" scratched into the corners of his calendar to signify a night that he was spending at Draco's flat, in opposition to the little "o's" that represented a night in at Grimmauld. The creep of familiar objects into new places—a lonely grey wool sock atop the rest of Harry's folded laundry; the cell phone pressed into Draco's palm with a single unlisted number pre-programmed into it.

There was a creep, too, of what was shared. The conjured mirrors that started to pop up more often during sex were quickly replaced with the real-deal, placed unassumingly along the walls in each bedroom, but often summoned so that Harry could watch. He stuttered and warmed when he brought up this newly discovered fetish during a therapy session—another new thing—though his Healer had simply gone wide-eyed and said, sagely, "Ah yes—the act of observation can be very erotic," and waited for him to continue. He had started talking about things that had previously been off-limits. His guilt, which felt limitless. His sadness, some of which he'd never admitted to himself even existed. Sex, and emotional intimacy, and in that way he almost, almost, talked about Draco too. 

Draco took to teasing him gently about the mirrors, the way he did whenever he liked a thing about Harry, but couldn't bring himself to say it in so many words.

"It's funny that it's only now that you care to pay attention to what's going on," he said one day, pulling at the skin beneath his eyes as he judged his skin's pliability in his newly installed mirrored headboard.

"I paid attention before," Harry said moodily before he realized that riling him up was Draco's goal all along.

"You paid attention, sure, but now," he said with both eyebrows raised. "I hate to be a reductionist, but you can hardly get over how good you look when I fuck you, and I think it speaks to your being a true bottom. Personally, I'm all for it."

"A _true bottom_? What are you on these days?" Harry asked. Draco went back to playing with his face.

"I don't mind it at all, pet. Not that I don't mind trading every so often, but...I told you, I don't often bottom for anyone shorter than me."

"Is that what this is about? Would you prefer me on stilts, then?"

"No," he said petulantly. Harry wondered if he should bring up his affection for what amounted to prideful, posh whining during therapy. He didn't see it as a problem needing a fix, but it was probably odd that he liked Draco, even when he acted this way. Wasn't it? Did he want to dissect why? _Probably not,_ he thought. Probably best to leave all the thoughts he had about Draco firmly where they belonged—locked away and largely unexamined. 

"What I'm getting at is that I enjoy you just the way you are," Draco said, looking a little shocked that he'd said it at all, and then resolutely not meeting Harry's eyes, which had gone a bit googly.

"And how is it that I am?" Harry asked, a flare of interest travelling directly to his cock.

"Limber," Draco said, turning to him, and even though they'd only just fucked in the shower, it was on again.

"Yeah?" Harry asked, straddling him, grinding up against the thickening erection that he knew would be back inside him within the minute. He was experimenting with being on top lately, bouncing on Draco's prick. The experiments had all, thus far, gone brilliantly.

"Am I good, like this?" he would say, and Draco would hum into his neck and tell him, "Yes, pet, you're very fucking good like that," and maybe it was crazy, but the way Draco said it made him elated, happier than he'd ever felt before. It was like flying, Draco telling him how good he was as he fucked him. It was _brilliant_. 

Harry fell asleep in Draco's arms more nights than not, lately. This was a change, minor in some ways, major in others.

Minor, in that the number of showers required in any given week had increased substantially, partially because even a good fluid-banishing charm was no match for a proper scrub with hot soapy water, and partly because Draco burned like a furnace and Harry found himself waking up either sweating or covered in Draco's sweat, and there wasn't any point in figuring out the difference.

Major, in that Reza and Ron and a growing list of friends and associates, noticed how often the Floo to Grimmauld was locked, bouncing back notes and people alike from entering during increasing numbers of hours of the day and days of the week. This was troubling, as the nosiness spelled numbered days when it came to continued secrecy in Harry's life. Pansy knew. Pretty soon, one would become two, and then it would be corroborated, and then it would be a scandal. 

Some things, they spoke about openly. Harry learned of Theo Nott as a person, a person with an incredibly handsome older brother, a person whom Draco had been very close to before school but fell out with over a snubbed birthday party invitation at age eight. He discovered a secret history of how Crabbe and Goyle had both been around for "the ballet incident," as it was known between them, and had breezed over the fact that Draco was gay, telling him it didn't matter to them so long as they could all keep trading Chocolate Frog cards. His voice broke when he recalled the Fiendfyre that had taken his friend's life, how he felt the burden of how his cruelty to them had been met with understanding because of their own cruel upbringings. Harry struggled to keep his mouth shut but came to hear tales that turned his stomach about the things most Death Eater parents put their own children through, things he'd never contemplated as requirements for the creation of such hideous bullies as they had eventually become.

Draco started a session he liked to call "The Alternative History of Harry Potter." He'd sip his tea, lounging about with the manuscript as they sat in the drawing-room of Grimmauld late at night, picking sections at random and asking Harry to reveal what had _really_ happened. Betting was often involved, as to whether there was any subplot that had been left out or not. In this way, he won many sexual favours from Harry about little details left out here or there. Through the guise of the game, this was also how he learned about the cupboard and the bars on the window, and by extension the cellar, and why Harry had once found solace in his pantry.

"Small spaces," Draco said with a sad smile, and Harry hadn't entertained a discussion on the topic anymore, though it was unspeakably refreshing to have someone who _knew_ , even if he couldn't talk about it yet.

They'd had an enlightening conversation about first crushes—Draco's being Theo Nott's afore-mentioned older brother, Harry's, when he got down to thinking about it, being Oliver Wood. They'd talked about who else they'd fancied back in school, with Draco's grand reveal of Dean _and_ Seamus, and he hadn't meant it to happen, but Harry had brought up Cedric. How, when he thought about it, the older boy had likely been flirting with him in the months before his death. How, even though he hadn't fully understood it at the time, he'd enjoyed it. How after his death, Harry had sought out Cho because she was the closest thing to him that was around, and how confusing and awful that whole endeavour was.

"He's the first person I saw die," Harry said, "the first classmate." He didn't cry that night, but he did until he'd felt empty the next time he saw his Healer, and _that_ was a seismic shift from the life he'd been living months before.

His own rapidly beating heart and shaking hands were quickly tamed as his drive to black-out waned. Draco dutifully provided him with a fresh vial of Dreamless Sleep each week, carefully portioned to avoid dependence. Harry weaned himself down to the bare minimum; enough to banish dreams, but not so much that he wasn't startled awake the first time Draco had a nightmare.

He'd whispered his name and tried to shake him awake from his mumbling, but it was no use. Draco whimpered, hands scrabbling against Harry for a time until he settled back into sleep. When Harry brought it up the next morning, Draco shrugged it off.

"It's nothing," he said, eyes carefully avoidant, "just the regular kind of bad dreams."

"Do you remember what it was? You seemed—"

"It's nothing, like I told you," he'd snapped, getting out of bed. "I don't remember. I'll start taking a low dose of Dreamless Sleep again myself, and then I won't wake you anymore."

They still had sharp edges, topics that couldn't be poked at without poisoning the mood completely. Mentions of Lucius often led to broken glass and walls that wouldn't stop shaking. Harry's casual remarks of cabinet ministers and heads of state caused more than one row, about how utterly delightful it must be to have whatever you want on the agenda without having worked a day in your life on the topic at hand, which Harry thought was rich and said as much, considering Draco's background and what his life-path would have been before the war they'd both fought in. Considering what kind of a snot he'd still be had that war not been won _by Harry and his ilk_. The fights that ended in slammed doors left Harry ashamed and Draco pretending, his face a mask of calm though his eyes betrayed a real fear, sometimes, and it was those fights that kept Harry going for more sessions with the Healer, and coming back changed, little by little.

It was hard to tell when exactly he noticed it happening, but Harry started to self-examine that what he felt ran deeper than lust and was absolutely stronger than affection. Finding himself setting hard-stops for meetings and actually holding to them, saying "no" with a straight face to last-minute requests that would have sent him reeling with guilt only six months ago, but which now he saw for what they had become: impositions on his limited time with Draco. He would have thought that this change signalled that Draco had turned him selfish, but he was smarter than that and saw it for what it was.

Draco had become something of a rock to lean on, had taught him about self-worth and what it meant to truly be independent. He quietly went about working harder every day than Harry could give him credit for. Harry watched as it took him a steady campaign of being the first one in and the last one at the apothecary out until Leon, a curmudgeon of a man who worked behind the counter and had lost a cousin in the Battle of Hogwarts, asked him to go round with the rest of his coworkers to their local the coming Friday. How Draco had slid it into conversation like it was a terribly unimportant detail of his day, barely worth mentioning, but had fussed over which of two shirts in an identical colour to wear to work that day, his only concession to the nerves he surely felt. Or how he must have been overflowing with pride when Mordred, a venerated potions master from the Department of Mysteries, sent him a memo that a research assistant position in her was opening in her lab in the new year and had Mr. Malfoy put any thought to putting in for a transfer?—that Draco hadn't even shown Harry the memo, had simply pinned it above his desk, looking over at it when studying some nights before making a fresh espresso, sitting down, and forcing another paper into his brain.

Harry felt proud when he thought of Draco. He wanted to show him off, dote on him. To be able to declare, _"He's mine, and I'm his, and I won't be taking questions."_

They talked around the subject of going public but never directly about it.

Jokingly, one night, as he chopped herbs to top their dinner, Harry asked, "So what is it really like lately, dating Harry Potter?"

Draco sat, head in hand, bent over a parchment covered in the markings of a potions proof that made Harry dizzy to look at. The constant scratching sound of his quill stopped for a moment.

"Lonely," he said distractedly, without looking up. It was like time itself stopped, how Harry thought his heart stopped beating at that moment. Draco scratched one last thing on the page and dropped the quill, rubbing his face vociferously, the mask immediately back in place. He gave Harry a tired smile.

"Sorry," he said, getting up to cross the room and join him in the kitchen. "Long day. It's delicious, that's what it is," he'd said, coming up behind Harry to wrap his arms around him, resting his head against his shoulder. Harry nervously fingered the note in his pocket, a little thing he'd scratched out earlier in the day that simply read,

_I think about you every second of the day, and I want to be yours forever. What's that called?_

"I'm hungry and cranky, but whatever it is you've made, it smells incredible. Can we be terrible and eat on the sofa?"

That night, about to take his turn at the bathroom sink, Harry looked into the mirror and blurted, "Christmas."

"My birthday."

"What?"

Draco rolled his eyes, smoothing an oily cream into his face. "I thought we were playing some game where we named our favourite holidays."

"Your birthday is not a holiday."

"It is to me," he said, continuing the rubbing at his neck and chest. "That was what _I_ was doing, anyway. What are you yelling at me about Christmas for? Afraid I'll forget to buy you a present? Because I'll have you know—"

"You and me, going public. Christmas," Harry said, before closing his eyes and trying to string a coherent sentence together. "If you can wait until Christmas, you could join me at the release party, and it would be, you know. Official. Out."

"You want us to come out as a couple," Draco said, tone flat.

"Er, yes." Harry looked at him and found he couldn't read him at all.

"At the release party to your book," he continued.

"Er, yeah."

"Directly before Christmas, the holiday we are beholden to spend with our respective families," he said. Harry blew out a gust of air, scratched nervously at the back of his head.

"Yeah, hadn't really thought about that part," he said.

"No. I rather think that you just thought about it, right now, and blurted it out the moment it came to you," Draco continued, wiping his hands on a towel.

"Well, I mean—"

"Yes," Draco said, nodding to himself. "Yes, that's alright. I can wait."

"You can?" Harry said, a weight dropping from his shoulders. Draco looked to him, his face serious.

"We should perhaps _tell_ our loved ones in advance before anyone goes and tries to just...show up."

Harry shrugged. "Nah, I think it would be great if I were to be a surprise present under the tree for Lucius."

"Oh yeah?" Draco said, crossing his arms as he leaned against the counter, a smile threatening his lips.

"Oh yeah," Harry said, smoothing his hands down over his shoulders, "I think it'll go swimmingly."

"Fantastic. Let's not ruin things by talking about this at all or planning it any further," Draco said, pressing a kiss to Harry's lips.

"We can wing it. What's the worst that could happen?" Harry said, kissing him back.

"We," Draco said.

"Yes, we," Harry said, taking him by the hand and leading him out of the bathroom, "now come to bed."

* * *

**Saturday, November 22, 2003**

"Somebody's happy."

Harry stuffed his hands in his pockets against the cold, casting a wordless warming charm at his godson, who trod ferociously on the path before him. 

"Harry! Watch for slugs!"

"Thank you, Teddy. I'll be careful." Little Teddy Lupin turned to observe if Harry was indeed being careful, which meant that Harry had to keep both eyes trained very carefully at the ground as he walked.

"You too, Gran!" he called out, and Andromeda Tonks dramatically lowered her gaze to the dirt as well.

"Yes, thank you, Edward, we'll be cautious of the slugs," she said, turning to share a bemused look with Harry.

"I am happy," Harry said, a little more quietly, in response to her. They'd met at the bird-watching reserve for an afternoon walk, Harry having taken the initiative to set the time, place and date with her rather than let the guilt at not being enough of a part in his godson's life eat away at him until she made plans. The reserve was muddy and grey, but Teddy was in love with every small creature they came across, especially those that oozed.

"You'll forgive me for prying, but is it a special someone?" Andromeda asked. Harry's stomach tightened—he'd seen her and Teddy both, briefly, at Molly Weasley's birthday, but they hadn't spoken at length since he'd come out. 

"Yes," he said resolutely. "Yeah. There's a lovely someone, actually. He brought me here, originally."

"Bit of a boring one, then?" she said, and Harry laughed deeply.

"What makes you say that?" he asked before calling out, "Don't go too far ahead, Teddy! If we're not careful, we might stumble on the wet stones, your gran and I!" He gently summoned Teddy back to them as he rushed from side to side of the path, from patch of reeds to spot of earth with _Snails, watch for snails!_ to a slimy-green pond, and back and forth again. 

"Not much of an exciting spot for a date for young people like yourselves, is it, a bird reserve," she said, looking around them. "The kind of a spot a bookworm might pick, or a brown-noser." Her pursed lips spoke to an affected air that her speech didn't hold at all, though her resemblance to Narcissa Malfoy always made Harry feel younger than his years, as though it were wrong to speak to her as a fellow adult, when he was so clearly a child next to her and always would be.

Harry tried to curb his smile. "He's both of those things, in fact."

"Does this he have a name?" she asked. When Harry didn't immediately answer, she added, "You know, I'm not one to judge. I've always had friends who loved who they loved, and as long as people are good to each other, who is anyone to say who that should be?"

Harry bit his lip and nodded, eyes gone misty when he picked his gaze up from the path to spot Teddy's yellow slicker, stopped now as he squatted over a newly found slug that he was trying to get to move back to the grass with some helpful prods with a twig.

They stopped a few feet away, and Harry steeled himself.

"I can't say, just yet, but I will. We're taking it slow and—it's a lot, I've discovered. Asking someone if they want to date Harry Potter. I've got a bit of a spotlight shining on me, whether I want to admit it or not."

"That's perfectly alright. I've read that you're attached to several young men at the moment."

Harry snorted and looked to the dishwater grey sky. "Funny, that. The papers always seem to know who I'm dating before I do."

"And your friends? They're keeping well?"

"Yes, they're well," Harry said. "I'm going on a ski holiday with some of them, actually, later this week." Harry gulped, realizing that he'd forgotten to plan or pack or tell anyone relevant. "Once I'm back, I'd love to figure out Christmas. With you, and Teddy, I mean. I should have asked already, months ago, er, fudge—maybe you're not even planning to be here? Are you planning on being here?" 

Andromeda patted his shoulder. "You're doing fine, Harry, trust me when I say that there are hardly any young men your age, and with your responsibilities, who manage them so well." Harry opened his mouth to retort and closed it again.

 _If you can't accept the compliment, you can at least be quiet_ , came the memory of Draco's voice floating up from his memories. 

"I'll be visiting my sister this year, as we've come to terms on a few...matters, and she wants to reconcile."

"Good luck," Harry breathed, and Andromeda guffawed.

"I'm not scared of Cissy. If anything, I fear for her. She was always the one of us who was prone to tears when confronted with a difficult situation, but only time will tell." She shared a significant look with Harry, one he was bewildered to, having not really grown up with siblings.

"Once that ordeal is over with, we'll see you at the Weasley's, I'm sure. Molly's had us pre-booked for a room since New Year's Eve," she said with a knowing smirk. That only Bill and Fleur of the Weasley brood had yet borne children was fast becoming a hot topic in the household, and the presence of Teddy significantly improved Molly Weasley's mood at family events. The more children around for the winter holidays, the better for everyone. 

"So, you'll be bringing Teddy to Malfoy Manor?" Harry asked. Andromeda gave him a curious look.

"Indeed. He'll be perfectly safe there, I can assure you. Lucius Malfoy will already be visiting another property, I've been told."

"It's not that, it's—" Harry shook his head, "it just made me think of Draco. Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

"And what of him?"

"We went to school togeth—Well, you already knew that and, I've, um, we've seen one another sometimes. With work stuff. He's a good guy, these days and it's just, I hadn't thought before, how he and Teddy are, er, related. Maybe they should meet each other? That seems, uh, fair. Good? That seems good."

Andromeda gave him another look that Harry couldn't read and then turned back just as Teddy stood, face shining with pride, approached them with something cupped in his hands. 

"Of course. That does seem good," she said. She looked down at Teddy, hands on her hips and said, "Now Theodore, whatever you've got, I think we're going to have to eat it for our dinner. What do you say, Harry?"

"I say _yum_ ," Harry said, all worry forgot at the tinkling laughter of the one, perfectly good thing that had come out of the war for him. Well, perhaps that was now two. 

* * *

**Sunday, November 23, 2003**

It was a rare thing to surprise Hermione into silence, and the sound of it brought Harry an even more occasional feeling of absolute joy.

"Not bad, eh?" He said, elbowing Ron in the ribs.

"Not bad doesn't cover the half of it, mate," Ron said, elbowing Harry back distractedly.

Harry watched as Hermione's jaw opened and closed like a fish out of water, her hands waving about so quickly that the red of her nail varnish was a rouge blur.

"Say something, Hermione," Harry said.

"It's unrecognizable," she said, "it's astonishing! It's, it's—"

"It looks like you're in love, mate," Ron said. Harry's face scrunched up as he barked a confused laugh.

"What? It's just the house being happy, like a new coat of paint. It's—what, why would you—er."

"Harry, I can't tell you how good it feels to be, out of the three of us in a room, the resident expert," Ron said, dragging his fingers over the newly-appeared high-gloss wainscoting of the room's walls. "Not that Mione doesn't know about this too, but I actually grew up in a magical house, and you've got it bad, friend. Like, in love, bad. Real bad."

"What are you on about?" A prickly feeling came over Harry's skin. He didn't like this word being thrown around— _love—_ so casually. It wasn't right.

Ron cleared his throat, clearly enjoying himself. "You're the master of the house, and the house recognizes that whoever it is that you've been clandestinely bringing by is likely to be its new master too. And that you need some help convincing this new master to accept you. Used to happen all the time."

"What, like houses spiffing themselves up when people were courting, or whatever you're on about?"

"That's exactly what I'm on about," Ron said, knocking at the new oak coffee table, his eyebrows rising in surprise at the hearty sound. "There are tons of old wives tales about a chandelier popping up the night after a young witch brings a suitor home, and that being the sign of the two of them being soulmates—"

"Wait," Harry gasped. _"Are soulmates real?"_ Hermione snorted behind him.

"Lucky for you, they're not," she said. Harry heaved a sigh and craved a drink, annoyed that alcohol was now reserved for weekends and special occasions. He wished he'd never shown them the sumptuous new carpets of the halls, fresh grout between shining tiles in the bathrooms, and especially not the superking sized bed that had replaced his prior double. "You should see the look on your face."

"That's not the point, though," Ron said, looking patronizingly at Harry. "It's clear as day that good old Grimmauld wants you and your mystery lover together, forever, and it's pulling out all the stops to make that happen. Now, for the love of god, will you tell us who he is. He's not, like, terribly old, is he?"

"Or young?" Hermione asked.

"Ew, what? No! He's neither very young nor very old—"

"I'll summon Kreacher to ask if I have to," Ron threatened. Harry raised a hand, eyes wide.

"You wouldn't dare, and I'll tell him not to say. Please don't—"

"Is it Malfoy?" Hermione asked.

Harry held his breath as Ron turned his attention towards her voice.

"Don't be daft," he said, guffawing. "Could I summon Kreacher for another drink, Harry? Even the whisky tastes better now—or is this actually better whisky?"

"Is it?" Hermione said again, softer this time as Harry heaved a breath out.

"Mione," he stalled. "We're friendly, I've seen him out a few times, and he's a decent bloke, these days honestly and..." he started, but the look on her face told him that there was no point in trying to hide it now. 

"How?" he mouthed the word as her expression turned pained.

"You smell like him," she said with a shrug, and Harry blinked slowly. 

_Of course she'd notice that._

"Why'd you have to be so smart?" he said so quietly that Ron didn't hear him.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione raised a hand to her mouth, wincing. "You never pick the easy path, do you?"

"Wait, say again—what did you say?" Ron looked back and forth between them, joviality draining from his voice. "You're joking, right, Pulling my leg? Well, good job, I believed you."

"Is it serious?" Hermione took the far seat on the sofa, patting the space in the middle, and Harry followed her over and sat.

"Yeah. Sort of—very," he said, swallowing against the rising tide of fear.

"You're not serious," Ron put his drink down heavily on the table. "You've had fucking _Malfoy_ in the house?"

"I'd be very careful what the next words out of your mouth are," Harry said sharply. "Yes, I've been seeing Draco—"

"It's _Draco_ now—"

"Of course it is!" Harry exploded, and he was up, chest to chest with Ron, blood rushing in his ears. He felt as though he was vibrating.

"How the fuck did this happen?"

Harry spluttered. "I didn't—We didn't _mean_ for it to happen. We didn't plan it with you in mind, okay?"

"I'm not saying you need my permission, but _Malfoy_. Harry, come on."

Harry felt hollow and sick all at once, his heart beating out of his ribs. He had to make them understand. He couldn't choose, either or. He _had_ to make them see, but he wasn't prepared for this.

"It was like we met again, and he's different now. We're both different now," he said, voice thick with emotion. He looked back to Hermione, feeling frantic. "He _sees_ me. There are parts of me that aren't fit for people—I can be dangerous, and he's patient. He's kind, Ron, and he makes me better, and I—" his voice cracked, and when he looked down, Hermione had taken his hand.

"Breathe, Harry, breathe," she implored.

He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, the way his Healer had taught him. The feeling that his bones were reverberating slowed, stopped.

"Was that just me?" he asked her. She shook her head and squeezed his hand.

"The walls were shaking," she said.

"You can't keep seeing him," Ron cut in. "Simple."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. "I care about him."

"Harry!" He slammed down his glass on the table, winding up for a proper yelling match. "The fact that it's a secret relationship should have been your first red flag! The first!"

Harry forced himself to keep breathing, swallowing the pit growing in his throat. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

"We were going to tell everyone before Christmas. You can't imagine what it's like to _manage_ coming out about being in a fucking relationship. You wouldn't understand—"

"No, Harry, what I fail to understand is how you thought dating that rat of a person was a good idea."

"I didn't think about it, okay?" He cast his arms wide, scrabbling for the right words. "It just happened! I'm as surprised that it did as you are, trust me, but this wasn't planned. I didn't arrange my love life to piss you off."

Ron covered his eyes with a hand, pacing anxiously. He was genuinely coming undone with the news, which, while it wasn't unexpected, Harry hadn't planned for him to be this incensed.

"You're fine with it then, huh, the fact that he's got a fucking Dark Mark on his arm?" he said, his voice low and dangerous.

"Ronald, he had to take that when he was sixteen," Hermione said swiftly. He scoffed but didn't dare raise his voice at her. 

"He was trash long before then, come on. Don't you try playing this game with me, too. You're on his side?"

"This isn't about sides," Hermione said, levelly. She sucked her teeth, thinking. "Can't you see this is important to him? Even if it is— _surprising_ —"

"You've all gone mad." Ron shook his head, looking between Hermione and Harry both, clearly not finding what he needed. He was a high red, now, worked up worse than Harry may have ever seen him. It was the anger that took Harry the most by surprise.

"You do remember all the things he's said. To Mione, to me, to you? C'mon, you can't forget all that overnight?"

"So? What's it matter now?" Harry said. He could tell now that the trembling he felt came from within him, rather than from the house. He couldn't do this without them, didn't want to have to choose. This was all wrong, so wrong so fast, and he just had to make Ron _see._ "If he can't change, then what hope in hell have I got?"

"There's nothing the matter with you," Ron said, brushing it off. Harry blinked hard, making tight fists, thumbnails finding soft flesh, willing himself not to lose control.

"I'm broken," Harry said, tears welling up in his bottom eyelids from frustration. "There's so much in me that's wrong—"

"Oh, Harry, don't say that," Hermione pled. Harry shook off her touch, recoiling.

"I'm working on it, but I'm not good for people. I get—violent, I, I break things, and I'm shit at talking about it, about anything, but I trust him. And I don't trust many people, you've got to believe me when I say that—"

"You're not broken, mate, but he isn't good people, and I won't stand for it," Ron cut him off. Harry blinked back tears.

"Ron," he warned, but he simply picked up steam.

"I don't give a fuck how lovely he is at Luna's little parties or how polite he is at work. He's ingratiating himself because he has to, to survive—that's it, full stop. Him and his father's fucking cronies—"

"He's not his father—"

"He's the reason people died; how can you forget that?"

"He didn't kill anyone—"

"He as good as—"

"Hating him doesn't make any of it better. It won't bring Fred back!" Harry yelled, and Ron raised a fist as Hermione physically got between the two, her magic pressing them back by inches.

"Stop it, both of you stop it right now! she yelled, eyes resolutely on Ron. "We're all running a little, um, _hot_ right now, but if you could both just calm down—"

"Don't bother wasting your breath Hermione," Ron spat. He pointed accusingly at Harry. "You and your Death Eater boyfriend aren't welcome at our house. I'm so sick of your shit, Harry," Ron said, and then he stormed from the room.

Hermione worried her lip, looking to the door. " _God_ ," she said, kicking at the floor. "He can be such an— _urgh_!"

"It's fine, Hermione," Harry said, retaking his seat. His hands shook too hard to hold a glass steady; he gripped the edge of the sofa to quell them. "Go after him. We can talk later—tomorrow, it's fine."

"Harry, this is my fault," she said. Harry shook his head, eyeing Ron's abandoned drink on the table.

"No, it's not. I'm fine, Mione. Go," he said, and when he looked up, it was into a cloud of hair, smelling like coconuts and faraway botanicals, the same shampoo she'd been using since he met her, age eleven, and Harry melted into the hug.

"Thank you," he whispered as she let him go. She nodded, pushing hair behind her ears and casting another worried look towards the door.

"He'll come round. We'll talk again soon and," she tilted her head and gave him another one of her sad smiles, "I'm happy for you, Harry. Really. He does seem different now. And not surface-level different, you know?"

"I know," he said, voice barely above a whisper. 

_Go, go, go—get out. I can't do this, not with you here._

"If you care for him, it's because he's shown you that he's a good person."

He kept his eyes trained on the floor. He needed her to leave.

"I only need for him to take care of you, the way you deserve to be taken care of, and that's enough for me. Could he come here if you called him?"

Harry nodded, careful not to speak again as she left, for fear that it would come out a sob. His fingers itched to grab the glass before him, to _Accio_ the bottle kept tucked away in the freezer, just in case.

_Just in case of what? Things get hard? You give up and give in to bad habits, so you can show up drunk at Draco's door, blathering like an idiot? What kind of a fuck-up are you, keeping a stash around when you can't be trusted, when he—_

His mobile phone smacked into his fingers, smarting them. He hadn't consciously summoned it, yet there it was, obediently floating less than a foot above the tumbler, and he knew then what he was going to do. 

"Greetings," came the cool voice on the other end of the line. Someone laughed, and then the sound suddenly cut off as though a door closed between them. 

"Hi," Harry said. A long pause followed. 

"Is everything alright?" Draco asked. 

Harry stared at the ceiling, forcing his vocal cords into submission so they'd stop aching. 

"Mmhmm, I was just—"

"Spare me. What's wrong?"

"You're busy," he said, sure that it came out normal, "I can tell you tomorrow. It can wait."

"I'm asking now, and it's the only time I'll ask politely. What's happened, pet?" Draco waited patiently through the long pause.

"They know," Harry said. "Hermione guessed, and I couldn't hide the look on my face. She and Ron, they know."

"Ah," Draco said. "Come here, please. I've got Pansy and Blaise and Matilda here, and they know too."

"What?"

"Don't do that," Draco whispered harshly into the phone. "They're my closest friends. They're safe. And they didn't leave me on the verge of tears with their reaction."

"I won't make good company," Harry said. His throat hurt from the want of a scream or a cry. He wanted the whisky, but did he want it more than he wanted Draco?

"Apparate here now, please. I won't make you mingle."

"Draco, I can't—"

"Guest bedroom. You have ten seconds before I come to get you myself."

Harry was too stunned to notice that the line clicked into silence. He didn't think of why not. He'd been told what to do. It was simple. 

Upon his arrival, he stood still as he waited for the wash of nausea to simmer down. 

"Alright there?" Draco asked, approaching him. Harry nodded after a few seconds. 

"It was bad," Draco said. It wasn't a question.

"Bad is an understatement," Harry said. The low murmur of chatting increased in volume as a door opened. They stood in silence as Draco's assorted guests crossed from the den into the kitchen, sound spilling out from the telly playing pop music videos. 

"I can't do this right now," Harry whispered, and the way Draco's face melted when he looked at him, raising a hand to graze his knuckles across Harry's cheek, nearly undid him.

"This whole...feeling things. Fuck," he swore. Draco chuckled. 

"Harder than just flying into a rage once every couple of weeks now, is it? Listen," he said when Harry looked at him, softening again. "All you've got to do is get from here to the bedroom. We'll say you feel ill, and you can say hello and head up to bed." He pulled Harry in, making space for his head to rest against his neck. "I won't be long."

"Like they'll swallow that story," Harry mumbled. 

"You haven't looked yourself in a mirror lately, have you?" Draco said, pulling away to plant a kiss to the corner of Harry's eye. "You've looked better, darling."

"I don't know what I'm going to do. They—Ron, he was so angry. He's so angry with me."

"Hush, that's for later. Here, take my hand. We'll do it together." 

Draco pulled him gently from the safety of the room, releasing his hand before they were noticed by his guests. It was an awkward, stilted meeting, at least until Harry waved and introduced himself to Matilda, Blaise's infamously Muggle-literate partner, and she grinned at him with hazel eyes glinting and said, "I hear you're famous." Harry blustered, confused at how to explain that he was, in fact, quite famous, an experience he'd never had before Pansy broke with a loud snort, and the Blaise and Matilda joined her in barely contained laughter.

"Save your breath, I'm Muggle-born, not some idiot," she said. "We used to play a game called Harry Potter at the academy I went to in Hong Kong as kids."

"Oh?" he said.

"Not really verbose, are you?" she said with a raised brow. Blaise Zabini, behind her, smirked. Harry could see why these were Draco's closest friends.

"Did you play Harry Potter or Voldemort?" Harry asked. Draco made a pleased sound behind him.

"Harry Potter, of course," she said playfully. Harry held her eye, combative.

"Why?" he asked. The room went quiet.

"Because he always won," she said.

"Trust, I don't always win. I don't feel like I'm winning today," he said. Pansy gave him a once over and winced.

"You _are_ looking a bit peaky, Potter," she said.

"Exactly, which is why he's off to bed, and why you three degenerates aren't going to force him into a conversation. You can run an inquisition another time."

"Oh, but _Draco_ , it's—"

"Another time, Pans! The longer he stands here, the higher the chance that he sicks up all over your Jill Sander, and how would you like that?"

Draco's words were final, and Harry was quickly trundled off to bed. Draco stayed behind, casting a _Muffliato_ that separated Harry from the low music and conversation below. After they'd gone, he slid in behind Harry and squeezed him tight, breath warm against his ear. They were both fully dressed, every movement rustling against the bedclothes.

"We're really doing this, aren't we?" he said.

Harry nodded in the dark. "I'm game if you are," he said. "But you can always—"

"Game on," Draco pressed a kiss into the back of his neck. "Stop trying to give me fucking outs."

"But—"

Draco hissed, sibilant as though he were born of snakes, and Harry relented. 

"Sleep, now. We'll talk tomorrow." He pulled away and stripped perfunctorily, helping Harry out of his clothes with a tug to his trousers, peeling his socks off for him. 

"There's almost nothing in this world that can't be fixed," he said, sliding back in under the sheets. Neither of them had bothered to brush their teeth, and Draco hadn't even washed his face, facts that belied how draining their respective days had been.

"Do you really believe that?" Harry asked the dark. Draco took a long time before he answered.

"I've had to, or I wouldn't be here," he said, taking Harry's hand and squeezing it tightly. "I have to believe it to be true. I have to."

* * *

**Notes** : Phew! Been waiting to share this one for what feels like forever. I hope you enjoyed—I've got some writing to finish up the latter half of the story.

Next chapter by **Friday, November 27** (but probably, hopefully, earlier than that).

Stay well! Thanks for all the comments and kudos—I love to read them, and the kudos let me know you were here :)

xx


	15. Made Myself So Small

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelations, good and bad.

* * *

**Tuesday, November 25, 2003**

"So."

Draco pressed the tip of his wand to the stem of a mandarin, the fruit hovering aloft in his palm as the skin peeled away in one long strip. Harry was fascinated by the little show of everyday magic—a key difference between purebloods who had grown up with magic, and Muggle-borns and people like himself, who did not. Draco was bored by the action, perfunctorily adding the rind to the pile accruing next to him. "How was the shoot today?"

Harry waited patiently for the moment when Draco extended his arm and dangled him a half, dropping it into his extended hand. Draco popped his own portion directly into his mouth and went to pull another from his jacket pocket, starting the process all over again. He'd grown even paler than usual of late, complaining of swollen gums, and Harry had joked that he was probably developing scurvy from lack of sun and proper food combined. He'd responded by doing this—secreting bags of mandarins into his pockets via extensible charms and eating them in bulk whenever Harry was around. Harry didn't mind the new habit—he liked the fragrant oil on the wind, and licking the sweet juice from fingers—his or Draco's, he wasn't picky.

"It was fine." Harry sighed, pushing up his glasses to rub at dry eyes. It felt later than it really was, and he'd missed lunch completely, hot and itchy after hours on set spent smiling under bright lights. He wished for an inch of Draco's skin to play with, but he was warmly dressed, a skintight turtleneck of dark grey layered under that massive black jumper of his, and all that under a long mac, even his hands gloved against the cold. At least his ear was available, though he seemed too irritable to put up with any nibbling.

_There, you can at least touch him there._

Harry dropped an arm around Draco's shoulders and leaned in, brushing his nose against the cold shell of his ear, letting the smell of his hair soothe him. "Reza is getting impatient with my ‘mop,’" he murmured. Draco drew back with a tight smile, and Harry pulled back as well, content to sit close. 

"He threatened to cut it the next time he sees me, whether I like it or not."

"Tell him to fuck off; I’m in charge of your disaster now. Though, it is a touch too long in the back," Draco added, leaning and narrowing his eyes at the offending length curling over Harry’s collar. 

Harry smiled tiredly. His cheeks were sore. "You’re one to talk. Did you see your picture in Savoire Fairy?"

"First, I'm growing my hair out on purpose. Second—don’t remind me," Draco grumbled. His fingers wandered upwards, from dark curls to paling skin, into the thickets of hair that grew haphazardly from Harry’s skull. "The fact that they had the gall to ask if I had started the opera gloves trend as if it were even a question—who else was accessorizing with latex gloves last summer?" He raised a single white brow. "No one, I’m telling you, no one."

"It was a very favourable article." Draco waved him off. He was grumpy about the renewed attention focused on him in the magical media, however slight. 

"It was a fluff piece."

"It was positive," Harry countered, and Draco rolled his eyes. Harry wished he could manage something other than _hopelessly smitten_ when he looked at him, but he couldn't help it. He wondered, often these days, when the novelty of being able to look at Draco openly with all the affection and want that he held would wear off. Was it at six months? After the first year? Ten? He knew he must look ridiculous. 

"Once upon a time, you told me that one of the greatest outcomes of spending time near me in public would be a shine to your image," Harry spoke to break the silence—he'd been mooning too long.

Draco scoffed. "Yes—they waited to remind everyone that I took the Mark until the third paragraph." He vanished the pile of rinds, rubbing his hands together. He was stubborn about warming charms for some reason, never casting them for himself. "Ta for that thoughtful show of restraint on their part. Remind me to send the editor flowers." 

Harry leaned into the continued romancing of Draco’s fingers along his hairline and into his scalp, let his eyelids flicker shut. "And that photo with both of us in at the charity game last weekend, _and_ the little article in the Prophet. _"_

"Those hardly count." Draco withdrew his soft touch and pierced Harry with a look. "What aren’t you telling me, now that you’re trying to change the subject to how good I look and how everyone knows it?"

Harry smirked. He’d been caught red-handed. "Robards dropped by today."

"Ah." Draco cozied closer to Harry on the bench, letting his head fall heavily on his shoulder. "The Ministry grows impatient to have its poster boy back in the field."

"Something like that."

Harry stared out over the long line of violet meeting the edge of the ocean, its vast greyness unyielding against the white of the sky in the day's dying light. It had been hard to get away, with Robards’s pretend-casualness barely concealing his attempts at getting Harry to entrap himself with a promised date of return-to-work. 

"He was blunt, gruffer than usual. He knows things that I don't, clearly, and I wonder..." Harry sighed. "I don't want to know what they need my shiny image back for, and so soon. Some fucking scandal is about to break, for all I know."

Draco was silent, worrying a button on Harry's jacket. Once Harry had extricated himself from Robards' clutches, he'd Floo’d home, and all he'd wanted to do was sink into the couch cushions and, if he was lucky, doze off immediately. But Draco had other plans for him, had jumped them three times to bring him here, to the coast so very far from London. The path leading up a hill to the particular bench they now shared had long ago fallen into the sea, turning it into a rocky outcropping frequented only by sea birds and Draco. Another of his secret, quiet places. 

"And what would you like to do?" Draco asked at last.

"I always wanted to be an Auror, ever since I learned what they are," Harry answered. It was one of the most straightforward decisions he'd ever made, to join the Aurors. "Ron and I, we just assumed we'd work together and retire together and—I've never seriously thought about anything else."

"Close your eyes, and think. In a year, what would you like to be doing?" Draco spoke softly, twining their fingers together.

Harry tried it, taking in the organic smell of the long whips of seaweed rotting below, the tangy salt on the air, concentrating on his breathing to clear his mind.

"This," he said at long last. When Draco opened his mouth to retort, Harry got there first.

"Not _this_ , specifically, but—I’d like a break." Draco’s face softened, and he shut his mouth. "I don't know what I want, and I think what I need is some time to find it. To explore."

"To pursue a life of leisure, permanently on vacation," Draco teased. "You’re finally leaning into the role of the _nouveau riche_ playboy—how terribly uninspired of you." 

Harry knocked their shoulders together, careful to keep it playful and not accidentally cause a bruise. Draco was overworking himself—Harry had twice caught him in the past weeks holding tight to the edges of tables upon standing up, as though a bout of dizziness might swallow him up into the blackness. Even his mind, typically sharp as glass, had been dulled by inattention and forgetfulness. It was small things—Harry repeating what they were having for dinner, or where he’d put down his glasses—but the irritability that accompanied it was such that Harry couldn't point it out, so instead, he softened his responses.

 _Be careful,_ he told himself, when the want to ask Draco blunt questions reached a fever pitch. He swallowed the urges instead, could feel his anxiety turn the little stones of worry to bits of coal, hardening them, and in the process, making them seem more important than they probably were. _Not everything requires constant vigilance. Don't smother him—tread lightly._

"In all seriousness, a lot of the last few weeks has felt like a vacation to me."

Draco stiffened. "This is nothing, this is just—"

"This is a lot to me, Draco," Harry cut him off. "You don't have to diminish it. I think it's romantic."

Draco relaxed, his bony weight pressing into Harry's side once more. "I won't try to diminish the seaside at sunset for its romantic overtones, so I'll only say that you're welcome and I'm glad you like it." He pulled out his wand and frowned at a gnarled, fallen branch. It had dropped from the patch of forlorn trees holding what was left of the outcropping together and hadn't yet been kicked up by the winds and turned to driftwood. It twisted and turned into a long blanket of mixed greys and browns, which Draco spread across their laps and pulled up to under his chin.

"McGonagall would be proud," Harry mused, fingering the thick cloth. 

"Speaking of romance," Draco interrupted, the little frown returning. He resolutely kept his eyes trained on the sunset. "Maybe it's about time I told you about my wedding."

Harry snorted a short laugh. "Excuse me?"

"My wedding," he repeated with a resolute nod. "You should know that I was married once, though it was annulled, so in the eyes of god and the law, it's as though it never happened. It's a testament to Lucius' remaining scraps of power that you don't know about it—well, that nobody knows about it."

Harry was ready to let loose a laugh, to say _"Good one,"_ and punch him in the arm, though he wouldn’t dare because he would be made to pay if he ever attempted roughhousing of that sort with Draco. He held the urge back behind an awkward smile and instead said, "What on earth are you on about?"

"The summer I turned eighteen, my parents told me I was betrothed," Draco said. "That winter, I was briefly married. Very briefly—roughly fourteen hours, all told." His voice remained light, as though he were recounting the banal facts of his day at work. 

Harry's, in turn, rose alarmingly in pitch. "To who?"

"To whom," Draco corrected under his breath, turning his eyes to the heavens. "Jesus, I’m annoying _myself_ by correcting you for that." When he looked back to Harry, he must have realized that he was yet to answer the question by the growing look of alarm on Harry’s face. "To Astoria Greengrass, poor thing. You know—Daphne Greengrass's little sister."

"On purpose?"

Draco’s mouth had made the shape of an _O_ , ready to say something else, but it cracked into a wry smile instead. "Yes, on purpose, though barely coherent. I remember coming-to after the ceremony in my bedroom to her weeping about it. I told her she had nothing to worry about because I’d never want to touch her as long as she lived, and she started laughing and bawling at the same time. Nearly choked to death on her own snot, doing it."

"How?" Harry was incredulous. 

"It was arranged. It…" He straightened in the seat, and Harry pulled his arm back, turning towards him. "This was right after the trials." He looked at his fingers, clearly craving a cigarette, though he was in a cutting back phase and hadn't brought any with him. 

"Fuck. I’m sorry."

Draco washed a hand over his face, the faint edge of a smile on his lips. It wasn't a happy one. "That bad for you too, huh?" 

Harry snorted half-heartedly. "I can’t tell if I can’t remember a couple months or if I’m blocking out the memories intentionally."

"Don’t get too caught up—what’s the difference, really?" Draco gave a great sigh. "I, for one, intentionally blacked most of the days out." Harry took one of his hands—covered, for the first time in a long time, in gloves of softest black leather—in his own, and looked away. It was easier for him to talk when he didn’t feel watched, and he figured maybe it would be easier for Draco this way, too. 

"By the time I got my wand back from you, I was so depressed that I could barely summon my clothes in the morning." 

Harry was aghast, couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose one's powers to a feeling or the lack of them. 

"That's—I didn't know that could happen."

"Me either," Draco sniffed against the cold, maintaining his composure, whatever the cost. "How Muggles dress themselves every day is absolutely beyond me—dreadful stuff, trying to find the right shirt by hand," he added, attempting to break the heaviness growing in the air with a joke.

"This was when the...problems started for me. Drugs to feel something close to happy, drinking to dull the feelings that weren't. I was angry with my situation and so sick of existing that I tried to spend as much time as close to unconscious or euphoric as I could get. If I died, so be it, but I mean, you never really think you're going to die when you're young."

"Need I remind you that you are still young, _we_ are still young," Harry said, chagrined as he often was with Draco's insinuations that he was already an old man, youth long behind him. 

"I suppose you thought you were going to die all the time," Draco answered off-handedly. Harry could only shrug, wanting to give the fake smile he usually did when the topic came up, the one that placated people. He staved off the urge.

"Yeah, well, I kind of did. It was the constant threat that came true."

"That it did," Draco said, airily. He licked his lips, clearly unsure of how to continue. 

"I'm inferring your parents didn’t take well to your methodology?" Harry said, segueing back into the topic at hand, as Draco seemed set on wandering off the subject. It was Draco's turn to shrug, their shoulders rubbing.

"We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about anything at all. It was like the previous couple of years had never happened. I wanted to talk about it—it was the only thing I wanted to talk about, and they feigned amnesia." He huffed, cracking his knuckles. "I irked them to no end. And they wouldn't dare cart me off to talk to someone else about it either. Airing our dirty laundry to a stranger?" He whistled and shook his head. "The word 'therapy' is still a dirty one, at the Manor." 

"Is it that way with purebloods, too?" Harry asked, kicking at the peaty ground at his feet. He could smell himself like he'd run a mile earlier and had sat in that sweat— and he desperately wanted out from his clothes. He needed a bath and a good scrub, a close shave, a hot meal. To sing along with the mirror, and put on a pot of tea, and curl up with Draco on the sofa, pretending to watch a match but really stealing glances at him reading, wire-frame glasses perched on his aquiline nose. But in that discomfort, he needed to sit as still as he could and listen because Draco didn't give second chances. 

"How do you mean?"

Harry sat quietly for a minute, wondering how best to phrase it. "I mean, Muggles can be the same way. My aunt and uncle couldn't tell what they hated about me more—that I had magic, or that I was odd."

"You? Odd?" Harry looked over as Draco's eyes flicked around his face and then down to his hands, his trainers, back up again. "You strike me as more of a—how do you say—"

"Plain?" Harry supplied. Draco scrunched up his nose.

"No, never plain with you. You're sort of ruggedly handsome, like a gorgeous Greek— _idiot_ , if you don't stop it with that look," he squeezed Harry’s hand for emphasis. "But you seem—normal. Like, if you're a man's-man now, you were a boy's-boy then."

"I am a man's man now, aren't I?" Harry asked, and Draco bit his lip to keep from smiling too widely. 

"Oh, fuck off," Draco said, but the words lost their meaning when he let himself be kissed by Harry, slow, savouring the meeting of their tongues, the sharp outline of that favourite little tooth of Draco's. When he pulled away, his heart was beating double-time, and the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.

_Control yourself. This is a story that’s going somewhere if only you’ll listen._

"But really, how were you odd? I don’t see it."

Harry felt his shoulders rising, indecisiveness building in him. He pulled the blanket tighter around his side, wishing for something to fiddle with. 

"I was always, I dunno...off. Weird things happened when I was around—I could speak to snakes, even then, and my magic went haywire when I was stressed. Other people told stories—teachers, and god forbid the neighbours realize that _I_ was the kid who ended up on the roof of the school as a toddler, or whatever my latest trick was. But to be odd with Muggles is generally to have a mental illness, and I think I was just a lonely kid. It's, um," Draco stilled his kicking leg with a touch to his knee when a rock came loose and flew straight over the rocky ledge of the cliff, "it's one of those things most people still think should be swept under the rug."

Draco snorted. "If my parents could have found a rug big enough, they would have swept me under it. Or had a house-elf do it. As it was, we didn't talk about my obvious decline. Lucius and I barely fought." 

"You say it like it’s a bad thing, not fighting," Harry said. When he squeezed his fingers, they didn’t squeeze back. His eyes had gone steely, staring out, not really seeing what was in front of them anymore. 

"It was a bad thing. It was like I didn’t exist. I’d pass out on the front steps and wake up in bed or purposely pick a fight about their politics, our standing, the hypocrisy of it all, and it was all for nothing. They’d speak to each other like I wasn’t there if I wasn’t following their rules." He added, "They prefer to leave things unsaid. That’s their way." 

"You're really very difficult to ignore," Harry said. "I couldn't if I tried." 

Unspoken was that in some ways, Harry still thought of Draco as an obsession. Sometimes, he worried that what they had was fuelled on that, predicated by years of poking one another, of wanting what the other had, always looking for a way in if only to best them. Draco looked away, out over the ocean, so Harry couldn't tell how the statement made him feel. 

_You can't tell how he feels unless he wants you to. Only one of you can read the other's thoughts and every feeling. He gives you what he gives you—you know now that he's no easier to read up close than if he were a thousand miles away._

"I can't imagine what that's like," Harry said, his throat aching, "having parents around who love you, but pretend you're not there."

"It's rather grim," Draco said, working his jaw and sighing. "It's how they would punish me when I got a bit too _fey_ as a child, as my mother used to put it."

"Huge mistake on their part. I think your fairy-ness is one of your most attractive attributes." They shared crooked grins, Draco's disappearing too fast for Harry's liking. 

"I started to get messy. I didn’t even come out to them properly, just let the wrong pronoun slip out over dinner once, and then I got caught by Pimsy—my Father’s house-elf—sneaking someone in. A boy," he said. Harry couldn't quite read his expression, other than it contained a sadness that signalled another story altogether.

"Mum disconnected the manor from Floo access completely. She even changed the wards so no one could Apparate on or off the grounds rather than talk about it. They didn't say a thing about it. Not one word."

"Shit. I'm sorry." 

Draco shrugged. "I started to brew my own gin, and then I barely had to leave my rooms."

"I always thought you were a gin man," Harry said. He forced a smile, but Draco couldn't manage it. When he swallowed, he winced, like his throat was swollen too. 

Draco leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder and pulled his legs up to curl up under the blanket properly as the winds picked up. Harry's nose burned from the cold, but he didn’t mind it. Under the blanket was Draco’s radiant warmth, and it was enough.

"They told me the morning after I'd returned from a three-day bender in Rome that the Greengrass’ had been good enough to accept their offer, and would be visiting for a joining ceremony at the winter solstice, and wasn’t it good that I finally had something concrete and proper to look forward to."

"That sounds awful."

Draco hummed his agreement. "It wasn't great. They didn’t even mention which one I was supposed to get married to. The next day, I specifically remember waking up and looking out over the grounds at the lake, the same as I did every day, only this time, I thought about how I could drown there. How easy it would be."

They were silent for a while, watching foam build on the waves. Harry wondered if this was the part where he was supposed to say something deep and meaningful. The worry started to rise, so he took a chance and asked what was really on his mind. 

"Have you thought about killing yourself since then?" he asked. It made him ache to think of a Draco so lost that he didn't want to exist anymore. 

"Not often," he said. Harry was sure it was the real answer because of how it hurt to hear. "Sometimes, I get low." He turned and pressed his nose against Harry’s face, eyelashes soft on his cheek. "Less, lately."

"I’m glad," Harry said. They watched in silence as a gull and a crow flew by, battling loudly over something dead caught in the black bird’s beak, limp legs dropping from a furry body. The cawing felt prophetic—the larger, mottled bird won the battle, though the crow's kin came along and attacked it as the heap of them flew off, low, out of sight. Their screaming was cut short by the blowing winds. Harry sat still, gritting his teeth to keep from prying. He knew they were not yet done, that Draco’s story ended with flames. 

"I can’t quite remember it all," Draco said. 

"That bad?"

"To be honest, by then, I’d broken my one rule, which was no injectables. I know that the ceremony was on the grounds, and I wore black."

"Of course," Harry said, lowering his voice to mock seriousness. 

"Of course," Draco concurred. "When I woke up the next morning, I knew what I could do to make things better."

He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. When he faced Harry, he was the absolute picture of calm. 

"I set myself on fire." 

Harry held his eyes; this was the answer to the question that he'd somehow never asked. He was taken back to the time Draco had told him about his degree, how defiant he’d been. That defiance was gone now—the fire, so to speak, had gone out of him. His grey eyes searched Harry’s, zigzagging back and forth between them hurriedly. Harry wondered if he was the first to hear the truth in so many words. If perhaps it was his not asking that made Draco comfortable enough to share in the first place. 

"Say something," Draco whispered. 

"How?" he asked simply, and the question deflated the tension building on his brow.

 _How_ he could deal with. Useful, practical questions. Nothing too saccharine, or he’d skitter off. 

"It was my own potion that did it. It was an accident, though," he said, looking down at the offending arm, as though he could see what had happened all those years ago once again through the layers of his coat and shirt. "I applied it, and right away, I knew that it wasn't working the way it should."

"Was it supposed to burn?"

Draco shook his head. "No. Not the way it did. It was an experiment that went wrong—I wanted to take it back."

He blinked up at Harry, and his gaze changed, eyes gone close to black. It was as though Harry had disappeared completely, and he was looking right through him. 

"You have to believe me. I didn’t mean for it like this. I wasn't seriously trying to kill myself either. I was just—it was a half-cocked plan, poorly executed. I'm out in the woods by the lake, and it’s freezing. My feet are so cold, they feel like they’re on fire too. I rush over to the water to put out the flames, but it's frozen." Draco sat up straighter and shook himself, chuckling at the absurdity of it all. "The stupid fucking lake is frozen because it's winter, and I'm high as a kite, and I forgot."

Gaze glassy, but the faraway look was gone. He held Harry's eyes as he tilted his head, curious.

"What’s it like, to die?" he asked, voice small. 

Harry considered the question for too long of a pause for Draco's comfort, and Draco shook his head, murmuring "I’m sorry," as he rubbed his knuckles over the back of Harry's hand. 

"I am sorry, pet. Was that rude to ask?"

It was Harry’s turn to shake his head. His hair really was getting long, tumbling not just over his scar but the rim of his glasses. "No," he answered slowly. "It’s only no one’s asked me in so many words before. It’s...strange," he said, and Draco nodded, pulling a handkerchief from a trouser pocket to dab at his nose. "There was a backwards and forwards, at least there was for me. I had a choice to make and time enough to make it. It was peaceful. And it wasn't—it isn't painful. If you can feel pain, you're still alive," he added, hoping he didn't sound too macabre.

"That’s good," Draco said. "That’s good to know."

Harry frowned, thinking through the situation. It didn't add up, not quite. 

"How come you scarred?" he asked. "You should have been able to reverse a potions burn."

Draco looked to his gloved hands, rubbing them together. His frown spoke volumes.

_Should have been able to, if only, if just—what? What didn't his parents do to save him? What wouldn't they do, what couldn't they overcome to save him another ounce of agony?_

"Should have. The elves found me. They heard screaming back in the Manor, and I hadn’t joined the group for breakfast. That was enough for Astoria and her parents to rescind the offer of marriage, ergo the annulment. Lucius put together some sort of 'keep your mouths shut' reverse-dowry—"

"You’re tiptoeing," Harry said lightly. 

Draco sighed heavily, sniffling. "They decided to try and treat the burns at home, to keep it out of the papers. Clearly, it didn’t go as planned," Draco said. "There wasn't enough dittany in our stores, and they couldn't source more in time."

"I'm so sorry," Harry said. Draco bumped their shoulders together and shook his head. 

"Not your fault."

"I’m still sorry." The sun had dipped beneath the edge of the earth, the sky glowing a deepening grey. They would need to leave this little space soon; Harry realized that Draco had probably planned the visit for these reasons. A slip of time, a secluded place. Room enough to spill secrets and a place where they could be maintained as such. 

Draco didn’t acknowledge his apology the second time. 

"I retain value so long as there’s a chance that I make a name for myself in reputable society—pureblood society. To marry, to produce an heir, those are things they need from me to love me the way they want to. I’m spoiled goods if their people know that I’m disfigured, sick in mind, you know—" he placed a chaste kiss to his cheek, cold and dry like tissue paper, "—more than just experimenting."

"The lunches with Pansy," Harry said haltingly, and Draco barked a laugh. His lips had a purplish tinge from the cold seeping in, the skin of his cheeks stretched too thin over the scaffolding of his bones. November had passed in such a similar way to October and September before them, yet Draco seemed to be slipping away, like bits of him were being chipped off. Harry wanted to fill out the gaps and blur his edges, but he hadn’t yet found the source of his diminishing. 

"Those lunches are for my mother as much as they’re for Pansy's, to keep hope afloat. That maybe, somehow, one day..." He trailed off. "The gloves, those are a deal made with my father, to keep the errors of my ways under wraps."

Harry frowned. "In case you come back and agree to marry a woman—"

"—a pureblood woman."

"Why do you humour them?" Harry asked. 

"To keep them in my life, even tangentially." Draco’s voice took on a cracked quality Harry had rarely heard from him. He realized that while he'd seen Draco upset, seen him collapse under an anxiety attack that couldn't be kept at bay, he hadn't seen him open up this way before. Purposeful vulnerability didn't come naturally to him. 

"Father thinks that I obey him this way because secrecy is a condition of my inheritance—he added marriage and _male_ heir by blood, specifically, before I’ll see a sickle—can you believe it? He thinks that I wear these because it's the first step towards my having a chance at making the Manor my own one day."

Harry squinted at the clouds gathering before them, a swirling mess of darkening greys and mottled purple and blues, the colour of old bruises, trying to make sense of it all. "But why pretend, you know? Why capitulate to his bullshit at all? For god's sake—you don’t even talk to one another—"

"But I _want to_." Draco turned to him, and Harry noticed the wet tracks on his face for the first time, connecting the wells in his eyes to his mouth. He swiped the fresh tears away angrily, but the tracks refilled. "There’s a part of me that will never forgive them for what they did; not to me, not to each other, not to all the poor fucking people whose lives were destroyed by their idiotic power grab. Maybe it's the same as how I'll never totally forgive myself, but I have to try with them." Harry squeezed one of his hands to let him know that he didn't have to plead with him to understand. "They’re my parents. They’re all I’ve got."

"You’ve got me," Harry said, and Draco made an undignified snorting sound, more tears leaking. "You’ve got an aunt too, Andromeda. And Teddy, he’s your, um—"

"First cousin, once removed," Draco dried his cheeks and sat forward, elbows at his knees. "It’s a pureblood thing. You’ve got to keep tabs on who you’re related to lest you end up slightly more inbred than the rest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight."

"You’re half-Black; I’m not sure how much worse the inbreeding could get." A muscle in Draco’s jaw trembled. Harry pressed on.

"You know, considering that side of your family is so incredibly stacked with totally insane people."

The trembling of Draco's lips pulled them at last into the slash of a smile, the kind he wished he could refrain from. The sight of these smiles were some of Harry's greatest achievements—he could feel them, hot like blood, making his heart bang like a hammer against his ribs. 

_You’re so fucked. He makes you feel this way with a look, and you still know so little of him. And you’re too much the coward to ask._

"Hey, careful who you call insane around here," Draco said, poking Harry in the ribs. "I much prefer eccentric."

"I’m serious, though, about Andromeda and Teddy. Andromeda will be visiting Narcissa over the holidays—the two of them are making up, somehow. I think it would be nice for you to meet them. She’s a lovely person, and Teddy’s the best. I took them to the bird reserve, you know—he loved the slugs."

"Stealing my greatest hits and calling them your own. How original of you," Draco groused, and as he opened his mouth with another pithy remark, Harry caught him in a languid kiss that tasted as salty as the sea air from his tears. Harry kissed him until he couldn’t taste them anymore, the kiss becoming heated until finally, Draco pulled back.

"Your thoughts sound relieved," Draco said into Harry's lips. His eyelashes brushed Harry’s cheek, one of his favourite feelings. He pulled away, and Harry pretended that it was reluctantly, that it wasn’t just his signal to Harry that he should too, to open his eyes back to reality. 

"I told you that I once set myself on fire, and they barely buzzed with surprise."

"How often do you listen to the pitch of my thoughts?" 

Draco shrugged, one insouciant shoulder rising. "How often do you waltz through life with your heart on your sleeve?" 

"Hey," Harry tapped his shoulder, swaddled beneath so much fabric, "no answering questions with questions."

Draco shook his head, mock exasperated. "They're just—there, ready to be read, anytime. Not, read, but—felt. It's like it's a natural extension with you. I can taste you and smell you and touch you; I can feel your thoughts. Just a little."

"Like an aura?" Harry asked, and Draco nodded. His grey eyes were pink around the edges, sparkling brightly from the extra tears they carried and gentle when they turned to him. 

"Yes, in a way."

"Is it just my thoughts you hear like that?" 

Draco glanced away. "No comment."

"Slytherin till the day you die, then," Harry said. 

"I'm still not over you being the heir of Slytherin when I was _right there_." 

Harry bristled. "I wasn't! Firstly, it was fucking Tom Riddle, and secondly, he was using _Ginny_ , because of that fucking shit your father pulled—" He stopped when he could tell that Draco was close to bursting out laughing, the muscles in his jaw strumming to let loose a delighted howl. Harry growled, turning his own eyes to the sky.

"You little _git_ , you always know how to get under my skin." He brushed a lock of hair away from Draco’s face, the one that refused to behave. "I’m happy you told me the truth, you know." 

"I want to." Draco bit his lips, purpled and chapped.

It was then that the little voice, the anxious one, spoke to Harry for the first time in weeks. Its timbre was so unexpected that it echoed in his psyche, cutting through all the other clutter of his thoughts. 

_Something’s the matter with Draco._

A shot of adrenaline coursed through his veins at the revelation. It was true; something empirically was the matter with him. Some sickness, or trouble just out of Harry's sight—look directly at it and it hid—something was bubbling under the surface of his life, like a tumour growing under the skin, and Harry couldn’t stop it because he didn’t know what it was. It could be measured as the sum of many little things—a feeling, the spare look about him—but the worry was bigger than the sum of its parts. Harry could feel it in his gut, the re-emergence of that spectre that haunted him all his life. 

_You've been feeling too sparkling, too alive, and you let your guard down. Something is wrong with Draco. He’s hiding it, and you’re going to catch on too late, and you’re going to lose him. You’re losing him already because there is something wrong with him, and you let it in._

Harry held on to his smile—wide and white, teeth like perfectly spaced gravestones—even though his insides were suddenly slicked in ice. He was doing an excellent job of hiding his sudden change in thought—Draco hadn’t caught on that inside, Harry was imploding. 

"It just goes against my nature. If only you could know the toll it takes on me. Oh!" Draco clutched his breast dramatically. "Only so much soul-bearing per month or I'll break." 

_Just look at his cheekbones,_ The Voice continued. _When, exactly, did they get so sharp?_

Draco went on, having fun, and Harry couldn't hear the last of his soliloquy over the mutterings of The Voice.

_He can’t hear the pitch of your thoughts now, can he? Or is he tuning in and pretending not to, to spare the both of you the trouble of a row? Or doesn’t he care enough to ask, or doesn’t he care at all?_

Harry couldn’t prove it if asked, he just knew that their time together was limited, and it was necessary to remember this—him, just as he was now. 

_It really is getting long,_ Harry thought absently, brushing a sheet of hair back from where the tips hit his shoulder. It was like revisiting someone in a dream, the dream version always the age you needed them to be, still whole. _That’s us now,_ Harry thought _, before it all goes to shit, and it will. It will—_

"Harry?"

_You’re already too late to save him; something is wrong with Draco—_

Harry didn’t want him to cut the silky length short; he wanted to be able to run his fingers through it for years to come. 

"I still haven’t washed your hair." He whispered the words or thought them, couldn’t tell the difference. 

_You should do that tonight. Before it’s too late, before, before, before—_

"Harry? Are you even listening to me?"

_—there’s something wrong, he’s wrong now, there is something wrong with Draco—_

"Stop fantasizing about my hair, Potter," Draco teased lightly. Harry didn't stop petting it. He was taking it all in, this freeze-frame of Draco, looking crystalline, perfect. 

_—something is wrong with Draco, something is wrong, something is wrong—_

The fishhook scar and the lake of light blue in his right eye. The dip of his cupid’s bow and those lips, the lips he had selfishly thought he’d been kissing years from now when they were both wrinkled and old—

_—and it’s you._

Harry cleared his throat, snapped back. The freeze-frame wasn’t a good one anymore. He didn’t want to remember Draco looking worried at him, or god forbid, _for him_.

"I told you what death felt like, and you couldn’t even spare me a raised brow."

Draco was looking at him strangely, concealing a frown with a confused smile. He took Harry’s hand from his hair and lowered it between them, and Harry concentrated on that feeling. Fingers, covered and cold but gripping his. Alive. 

_As long as you can feel pain, you’re still alive._

He could feel, still; Death hadn’t come. Perhaps the feeling was just a feeling—a dopamine drop disguised as Doom. 

Draco’s barked laugh cracked like thunder in the quiet darkness that surrounded them. 

"You don’t need any more adoration from me, golden boy," he said, voice gone a little nasal from his earlier tears. "The world gives you enough of that to keep your head inflated through the next century."

The thought of inflated heads gave Harry pause, and the laughter went out of Draco’s face. 

"What is it, pet?"

"I keep forgetting," butterflies alighted in Harry's stomach. He could feel the oncoming storm coming—not from the horizon, or an outside forces, but from within Draco. It felt almost silly to continue play-acting his life when he was so sure that something terrible was just around the corner, yet he didn't have any choice about it. Life just kept barrelling on, whether or not he was prepared for it. 

"I promised to go on this stupid ski holiday this weekend. Ginny and Neville booked it a month ago. I think Luna and Pansy are going, most likely." 

"A group known infamously for their inflated heads?" Draco paused. "I don't follow."

Harry clasped his hands together, gathering strength. "A few other friends are coming along too—and Justin."

Draco visibly bristled, eyes narrowing immediately, but forced himself very quickly to sit back into a facsimile of calm. This unconsciously put distance between the two of them, Draco putting away all the warm, soft parts that Harry liked to caress. It was like watching a praying mantis folding its arms in—just as unnerving, left unsure if one would be lashed out against or left alone. He tugged the blanket from Harry and started folding it as though he were parcelling it up to bring back with them. 

"I’ll cancel," Harry said quickly. 

_What if he needs you more now than ever? What if all the alarm bells in your head are just that—your broken brain, your overactive imagination?_

Draco kept folding in silence. Harry wanted to reach out but was paralyzed by indecision.

_Or what if maybe, maybe he needs you the way he needs cigarettes. Perhaps you’re cancer. What if you really are the thing that destroys, and you leave, and he gets better? Could you leave him alone for good, then, if you had proof that it would save him?_

The silence grew too thick to stand, so Harry fingered his wand and cast a _Lumos_ and a warming charm, for want of something to do. Draco placed the perfectly folded blanket in his lap and smoothed its top, picked at the weave. He smiled at it—it really was beautiful. His magic always was.

"No need," he said at last. "I trust you. Go." The line between his brows smoothed away. "You deserve a break."

"I don’t want a break with them. I want to go away with you."

"And we will. Don’t worry," Draco reached out and took his wand-hand in his own. He had a devious look on his face, thoughts that belied how angry he probably was at the holiday in the first place. "Trust you me that I have plans that begin with feeding you little canapé’s in Italy and end with you showing me the depths of your Gringotts vault with some much-needed retail therapy on 5th Avenue."

Harry grinned, forcing cheer in the face of madness. 

_He's making plans, which means a future, a go at the real thing, together. So what if it seems too good to be true? So what if you’ve been happy—maybe you’re willing the doom to happen because you can’t just believe in the good of things. Maybe you’re making him ill, and if you could just pretend better, he’ll be fine._

"Sounds delightful. This trip though—Christ, with him there, it’s going to feel a lot like work."

"Go," Draco said, squeezing his hand and flashing a smile that was meant to be reassuring. Harry couldn't help but feel like it was put on, the overactive cheer of a person willing themselves to be alright, rather than a person experiencing the real thing, but he didn't want to push. He wasn’t one to judge; he couldn’t be. 

_And what if you’re both just smiling and pretending and something’s wrong, and you never do figure out what it is until too late?_

"It will give me time to concentrate on my work and for you to get away before the promotional storm hits. Is the rest of the trio going?" 

Harry sighed—he'd managed to push thoughts of his fight with Ron down so that they only resurfaced every hour, rather than every other minute of the day.

"I don’t know," he said truthfully. "Ron hasn’t responded to my letter. I’m having coffee again with Hermione tomorrow to talk about it. They were going to join, but I don’t know that it would be good to try to hash it out with him when everyone’s trying to have a nice time and not be able to tell anyone why we're fighting in the first place." Harry covered his face with his hands, peered at Draco through the openings between two fingers. "Are you sure I'm not allowed to cancel? Please?"

_Let me stay. What if you get hurt while I’m gone? What if I come back and the spell is broken, and you’ve left?_

Draco peeled Harry's fingers back, held on as he lowered them to his lap.

"No. You'll go, and you'll have a wonderful time, and we'll all be better for the little break. He’ll come round. He loves you, it’s plain to see, he and your Weasley family." Harry's heart swelled to hear him say the words so easily, _his family_. It steeled his resolution to have them meet because he knew that if someone gave Draco just one chance, he'd charm them every time. "Even more than he hates me, he loves you. Go," he said again, squeezing his hand for emphasis. "We'll all still be here, living our little lives when you return. December is going to test us. Shore up some strength while you can."

"You’ll be okay?" he asked. Draco scoffed.

"All of three days on my own? I’ll be fine." He must have caught on to the desperation in Harry’s thick fingers, clutching his own; seen the look of worry in his eyes from years of _I’ll be fine’s_ that—well, weren’t.

"I’ll be fine, Harry," he said, sincerely. "Honest."

Harry’s next words stuck in his throat, so he brought them to the surface of his mind instead and hoped they radiated out like warm waves on Draco’s skin, would warm his blood and wrap him in a veil of contentment.

 _You're what shores me up. You make me strong. I need you, but more than that, I need for you to be okay. And I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you_.

* * *

**Monday, December 1, 2003**

Draco wasn’t in his flat when Harry came in. He used the key he’d been given, took his shoes off and arranged them, toes to the wall, the way Draco liked. He called, and no answer came. There was, however, the sound of explosively breaking glass from above him. 

His heart rate spiked, and he pulled his wand, assuming a fighting stance on instinct. The air in the flat was still, and Harry detected no sudden movements. He walked quickly, grateful to be in socked feet, clearing the rooms on the main floor one at a time. Nothing out of the ordinary was revealed, and his diagnostic spells didn't detect anything living, save the plants. He took the stairs lightly so that he didn't make a sound. 

"Draco?" he called, needing the response of _"I'm alright!"_ but none came. 

_Come on, Draco. Come on, come on, come on._

Harry stopped in the bedroom, waiting, and the sound came again, though this time the breaking had a different timbre. It came from above but was heavier this time, like the smashing with great force of something made of fired clay.

 _"Fuck!"_

Harry's heart-rate stampeded. It was Draco, and he was angry, not scared. Harry took a deep breath and hoped that his building's roof wasn't as wet as the rest of the city.

Apparition's squirmy feeling settled quickly once he took in the scene on the roof, the source of the smashing noises becoming immediately apparent. Draco stood still about twenty paces from Harry, facing away from him. He used his wand to levitate a piece of pottery from a stockpile near his feet, an assortment of objects that Harry didn't recognize. Conjured, perhaps—transfigured from trash, Harry guessed. Draco stared at the hunk of crockery for a moment before he whipped it with great viciousness at a substantial metal box some feet away. He threw his entire body into the motion, the way a pitcher throwing for a game of baseball did and was silent as it hit its mark, smashing spectacularly. 

Harry lowered his wand, his panting breaths slowing. 

"Draco." 

Draco ignored him completely, though he'd certainly heard the _pop_ of his arrival. He didn't seem interested in acknowledging Harry at all, and Harry took the long silence to even his breaths and holster his wand, casting a warming charm at his feet, though it wouldn't be enough to keep them from wrinkling from the wet pavers beneath them. Draco selected a new piece, a massive lampshade of blue-green glass, leaded panes of a repeating diamond shape, and he paced and growled with frustration when it didn't break the way he'd hoped for. It smashed with a kind of dull sound, rather than the tinkling of glass Harry had expected. 

Harry considered walking over and trying to reason with him, but this was raw anger that he'd rather allow being tired out of the blond rather than turned on him, so instead, he sat. He sat on an unknown hunk of metal and he watched as Draco went through every single object in the pile, seventeen of them, all told. When he ran out of things to break, he cast _Reparo_ , cautiously levitating the repaired jugs and platters back into a pile near his feet. He wasn't wearing a jacket, and his white t-shirt stuck with sweat to the high ridge of his spine despite the sharply cold weather.

_Thin, too thin, still. Even for him—you couldn't pick out his spine like that before, could you?_

"A new form of stress relief?" Harry called out, finally. Draco responded by smashing a set of porcelain teacups, not turning to face him.

"I leave for a few days, and you start up—what would you call this? Smash therapy?"

The line of Draco’s shoulders remained tense, but he lowered the arm holding his wand.

"You must have a powerful disillusionment charm up here to get away with this," Harry clasped his hands behind his back as he walked the length of the roof, looking up and out at the dreary skies above. Draco's building was one of few high-rises in the blocks surrounding it, so there were no nosy neighbours to leer down and catch him in the act of smashing things with magic anyway.

"There is," he answered.

_So, he's talking now. Keep him at it, dig for the what the fuck is going on before he retreats into his shell._

"Come up here often?"

"Simmons dropped me today." The words were spoken into the wind so that Harry wasn’t totally sure he’d heard them correctly. Draco stared out over London—at what, Harry hadn't a clue—a stark, white streak against a sea of grey. "He’s no longer advising me in my research work."

"Didn’t you say that the Department of Mysteries wanted you?"

He barked a hollow laugh as Harry approached, stepping closer. 

"Without an advisor, I can’t hold my position at the apothecary." Draco’s voice dripped with anger.

Harry winced. The jagged little pieces of the scenario were coming together, forming an ugly but clear picture.

"And without the position at the apothecary, you can’t put in for a transfer. You’re saying you’ve been sacked."

"I’ve been sacked."

Harry came up behind him and lined up their bodies and hugged him. His shoulder blades pressed into Harry's chest, refusing to lay flat. It was like trying to hug an armful of wire hangers—everything poked, and nothing forgave. Draco stiffened in his arms but didn't jerk away.

 _Progress_.

"Did he say why?" Harry asked his shoulder. 

"Did he have to?" Draco responded acidly. 

Harry kissed his neck, expecting the touch to melt the rigid muscles in his body. It didn't. 

"This is fixable," he said, and the surety in his voice wasn't faked. "We can fix this. I believe that we can fix this."

"Who’s this _we_ you speak of?" Draco twisted out of Harry’s grip and turned to face him. Harry hadn't seen him so mutinous since the day of his hearing, could imagine him pushing him, not caring if he fell over the roof's edge. It was momentarily terrifying.

"I can see that you’re angry, but you don’t need to be angry with me," Harry started.

"Have a nice little trip, did you?" Draco sneered; his lovely upper lip pulled as though by a fishhook. "A lovely getaway, a good time to enjoy the company of a lickspittle your friends don’t despise?"

"Oh, Draco, come now, that’s low." Harry took a deep breath—one of them had to remain calm. "I told Justin in no uncertain terms that I’m not interested from day one. I thought of you all weekend, I—"

"Then how in the fuck did my mother, of all the people in the world, hear about Harry Potter happily dating some young wizard and going on holiday with him? She was making small talk, trying to bridge the fact that as far as she knows, I’m her forever single faggot son, and yet somehow, she hears these two details 'through the grapevine.' How does that happen, Harry? What am I supposed to do with that?"

Harry could laugh with how the wires had been crossed but knew it was a dangerous endeavour when Draco's eyes shone so brightly, and his hand’s grip on his wand had turned his knuckles blue-white.

"Andromeda," he said, "it was Andromeda’s doing. I told her I was seeing someone, someone fantastic. Someone incredible—"

"Shut up," Draco’s face crumpled like a sheet of paper balled up and ready to be binned, and Harry was astonished to see him so openly hurt.

"Draco, Jesus! I was talking about you, obviously. When would I find time to run around with Justin?" He scoffed—it was madness—but Draco avoided his extended hand like it would infect him, like Harry himself was a poison. The laughter that had bubbled up went flat inside of him—he was treading dangerous waters. 

"He’s a berk, and we have nothing in common. I've never given him a second glance, and you can ask Luna and Pansy, they were there—we spoke a dozen words to each other all weekend! When I saw Andromeda, I mentioned the trip—she assumed, and clearly, she passed those assumptions on to your mother. I feel nothing for him, Draco. He means nothing to me."

Draco chewed his lip, considering. The wind picked up, whipped strands of hair into his face. He turned into it and pulled out a hair tie, sweeping it up into a ragged bun. The new style revealed a spot on his forehead, a sure sign that he'd been stressed over the weekend. Harry looked to his feet—he knew better than to comment on Draco's looks with anything other than admiration.

"You look smart in that jacket," Draco spat out the compliment so that for a second, Harry thought it was a joke. "Why do you look smart?"

"Er, thank you? I think." Draco's eyebrows remained firmly low, his scowl hardly lessening. "I came from my agent’s. You know, Victoria? I told her about you. About us."

"Oh?"

Harry stepped forwards and took Draco’s hands, damp with sweat and bitterly cold, hopeful that his touch would relax rather than rile this time. He was always cold these days and brittle—he clearly hadn't slept well in the intervening time since they'd said goodbye the Thursday before, dusky shadows smudged under his eyes.

"She was on set while I was shooting for Nimbus, and I thought it would be a good time to tell her. I think she’s in shock, but when she comes round, she’ll want you in for media training. You should expect an owl from her soon."

"Oh," Draco said again, accepting Harry’s hands around his own. The frown was barely a pout now.

"Yes." Harry hazarded a smile, and he could tell Draco was holding back his own. _The bugger_. 

"Now, do you want to talk about why you’ve been sacked?"

"No." He sighed deeply and slouched, looked wistfully at the reassembled pile of glass and pottery, a sight not unlike a modern sculpture, heaped as it was. "I’m still in the breaking-things stage."

"Okay." Harry stepped closer and spoke directly into Draco’s ear, pulling him into a loose embrace. "Could I do something to make you feel better?" 

Draco turned to press his nose into his hair, breathing him in. "You’re welcome to try," he said, the words sliding out warm across Harry's neck. Harry brought his hand between them to rub at the front of Draco’s trousers. They were neat, pleated charcoal grey today, and it thrilled him to know what colour pants he had on underneath. 

He steeled himself, taking to his knees. "I missed the smell of you so badly," he said to his shoes. "I jerked off wearing your scarf every night."

Draco’s cock wasn’t hard yet, but it jumped at his words, and Harry grinned to feel it. His fingers curled around the stiffening thickness through layers of fabric, and when he pressed his palm against it, Draco couldn't contain his grunt of interest. Harry's heartbeat picked up as he knelt down, not bothering with another glance at the skyline to be sure they were alone. 

"I wondered where the tartan had gone," he murmured. Harry made short work of the belt and fly between him and his goal, nosing at Draco’s growing erection through his pants until he popped the head free of the top elastic band. Draco hissed as the cold winter air hit the sensitive skin. 

Harry played with Draco's cock, nudging the damp tip against his lips, mouth flooding with saliva. Fuck,but he was a slag for it, for the feel of it weighty in his hand. He wrapped the fingers of both hands around its girth and started with loose tugs, agonizingly slow. He hoped that the slide of silky skin against his palms never got old. 

"You too," Draco said. The anger was gone from his voice, replaced with a yearning that Harry could see when he looked up into his face. "Touch yourself too, and I'll tell you when you can come."

"What if I get it on your shoes?" Harry asked the question with a crooked smile, knowing that the thought of his coming on Draco's shiny oxfords would only serve to make the whole experience more erotic for them both. Draco liked dirty, craved any and all depraved thoughts that spouted from Harry's mouth. 

"Well then, you'd have to clean up your mess, wouldn't you?" Draco watched, a hand lazily jerking his cock as Harry loosened the buttons to his jeans and ruched them down over his hips. He was wearing an old pair of pants, boxer-briefs, so that his cock had grown hard down one leg, poking out the bottom. He didn't bother pushing these down but rather took himself in hand from under the hem, closing his eyes and controlling his exhale at the touch. He pushed his foreskin down with his thumb, rolled it back at a leisurely pace. Having Draco tell him to do it, having him _watch_ —it turned a simple moment of jerking off into something that sent shivers to the base of his spine.

Something cold touched his face, Draco's fingers pulling off his glasses and hooking them into the neckline of his shirt. Harry gave himself a few experimental tugs and reached back up for Draco's cock, pursing his lips and coming up on his knees to just the right height to suck at the tip. Draco's question, sudden and earnest, took him by surprise. 

"You really missed me that much, pet?"

Harry's lips wavered; he smiled up as Draco tucked his hair behind an ear. "So much." 

They'd agreed not to text or call or owl—too much chance of being caught, one way or another. Harry had taken Dreamless Sleep to keep from waking up his friends with an unanticipated scream, and so he hadn't dreamt of Draco; similarly, he hadn't had nightmares about him either. 

But he'd thought of him; fantasized about him endlessly. Worried and worried and worried, assuming that every owl someone else received would be it—the headline news that something terrible had befallen him—his building had collapsed, or his work had been bombed or, or, or. And when the information was tepid, and he had a second's respite, all he could think of was this. 

This being the smell of Draco and the feel of him. Draco's fingers in his hair and his cock in his mouth and his voice in his ear, soothing and pleading and making Harry want more than he'd ever wanted before. Harry leaned in and opened his mouth, inviting the head of Draco's prick inside. The musky smell of him was enough to relax Harry, the tension he hadn't noticed building up now ebbing away with each new breath in. His own cock jerked in his hand, and he held tight for a moment, recalibrating. 

_Don't come too fast, Jesus. Slow, slow—ride this out. See? He's still here, and doom came, and it's alright, it'll all be alright. He's right here, and he's not going anywhere yet._

Harry sucked lower, waiting for Draco's breathy sounds. He pulled back and off, fascinated by the slick wetness he left behind on half of his prick, a line of saliva connecting his lip to the tip.

"I haven’t come since you left, you know." Draco's admission was said in his low, slow voice, and when he slid his fingers from Harry's forehead back to grip into a fistful of his hair, Harry shivered properly, that line of spit hitting his chin. He looked up and knew what a depraved sight he made for Draco—mouth ajar, lips wet, shivering with want and jerking himself for Draco's pleasure. He was panting and opened his mouth wider, made a sound, a begging sound, and Draco smiled down at him, his benevolent master in this, the kind of sex he'd never even dreamed of.

"I’ve been saving it all up for you," he said on a push back in and didn’t that fucking do it for Harry. He'd meant to take it slow, make this first blowjob back a long, erotic ride, but he was equally happy to be used by Draco, and quickly. 

"Does that turn you on, pet?" Draco asked, and Harry moaned his answer, nodding as much as he could while Draco's hips set a comfortable pace.

He hollowed his cheeks and sucked hard, lower, lower still, and back up again. Everything was right again; at that moment, practically perfect. But something still niggled in the back of his brain, like a loose tooth that needed to be pried out.

_But does he ever think about me? Does he want me when I'm gone, the way I want him? Does he, really? Or does he just respond, say the right thing once I do? Am I the call, and he’s the response?_

Harry pulled off, panting. "I want you to bruise my throat," the words dropped out—he said them just to see the devious look of want spread across Draco’s face. It made him feel wanted to be used. And he could be dirty, he could be depraved. He _was_ ; he loved that Draco never found him to be too much, and he _needed_ Draco to look at him like that, like he'd hung the moon. He licked at the slit of his cockhead, the taste of salt that he'd come to associate with Draco, specifically, and without any pretence sucked back on eagerly.

"Fuck, pet, I missed you," Draco gasped as Harry swallowed his cock, and the words soothed him so much that he moaned with relief. "I missed you so much." 

_Bingo_.

Harry's eyes watered when he made it to the base, and he took a moment to ground himself. He held there, adjusting, breaths coming in soft huffs from his nose. 

Draco didn’t stand much of a chance, to begin with. The wind gust at his back and he had the whole of the city blocks before him to look down on, but he had eyes only for Harry; Harry on his knees, humming happily around his prick. The hand twined in his coal-black hair hardly mattered—Draco could keep Harry on his knees, jaw sore from expansion, with just a look. And when he started to fuck his mouth, cock trying to find entrance to Harry's throat, his green eyes went misty and every pore on his body prickled from the feeling. Draco pulled his hair the way he liked as he thrust into his mouth, trying new epithets on for size. 

"Yes," he breathed, "just like that. You were made to wrap those pretty lips around my cock, weren't you?" He pushed at the crown of Harry's skull to force him into a wider stance, the fabric of his trousers catching on the pavement, and Harry hardly noticed how much the bones of his joints twinged because this angle was better, and when Draco's cock pushed into his throat his eyelids flickered shut and his favourite kind of tears—the sort that leaked into his eyelashes when they did this—flowed. 

"You've got such pretty lips for a slut. You're my favourite slut, aren't you pet?"

As far as epithets went, _cockslut_ was Harry's favourite because that was the last one Draco called him before he came, jets of hot come erupting on his tongue. He came quietly, at least for him, and that which Harry didn't immediately swallow coated his cock as Harry pulled back, wetting his lips as he was pulled back down to the base and held there, choking around the intrusion he most wanted to be able to take. 

"Be a good pet and suck it all up, now, won’t you," Draco ground out as Harry did. As if he'd do anything but—he'd been dreaming of sucking Draco like this all weekend.

What had been admitted—sniffing his scarf. Held back, the memories of forcing wads of the fabric into his mouth, the remembered feeling of the fibres sticking to his tongue, to have something to bite back the groans that gripped him as he came, hard, again and again, in places foreign and forbidden from that kind of action. In the loo of a beautiful timber lodge while everyone else mingled for _après-ski_ drinks and snacks. In his bed, hoping that the _Muffliato_ he’d cast would hold, sleeping in a loft where any of his roommates for the weekend could have walked past or overheard. 

Harry didn’t just want Draco—he needed him, now. Missed him in a way that felt uncontrollable. Would do things he’d never dreamed of—suck him off on a rooftop in Chelsea without a second glance—as long as it kept him touching him and smiling at him and murmuring sweet words to him. Harry hadn’t come, and he stopped tugging to try. He looked up to watch delayed shivers wrack Draco's torso as his head lolled back with the release.

"Better?" Harry croaked when Draco pulled him off by his hair. Draco couldn’t seem to think of what he could say to express what he felt, so he hauled him to his feet and kissed him instead. 

"The best," he said when they parted from the long-overdue snog. He swallowed, holding Harry so close that their noses brushed one another, his fingers wandering down to give his cock a squeeze. "Let me take care of you in bed, and then we can eat dinner there."

"Dinner in bed? Have you become a total heathen in my absence?"

"Don’t be rude," Draco swatted his shoulder, gave him room to breathe again. He replaced Harry’s glasses on his face, a finger lingering as it traced from ear to jaw, tapping his chin. "If you’re done with me, you can put everything back together the way you found it," he said with an eyebrow raised. He needed only to say the words and stand still for Harry to do the work of putting his spent cock back in his pants and zipping him back up, doing the same with his own hard-on, albeit with a wince at the sensitive skin forced back into unforgiving fabric. 

"Thank you, pet." He pecked a kiss, and Harry grinned, and Draco rolled his eyes. "Such a giver," he murmured, "you're basically glowing."

"I like being helpful," Harry nuzzled into his neck, damp from the exertion of breaking things. 

"Well, the way you can be helpful right now is to stop giving me lip about wanting greasy foods while laying down. I’ve had a bad day, and I saw some Muggles eat pizza in bed on the telly, so it must be a done thing. You can banish the crumbs after." He huffed a little. "Do you want me to suck your cock or not?"

"I want you to fuck me until I can’t talk, honestly," Harry said without missing a beat. "I missed you."

Draco caressed his cheek, hot with exertion. "In that case, you can start on dinner, I’ll watch, and when I’m ready again, I’ll have you in the kitchen." He swiped a thumb under one of Harry’s eyelids to pull the skin taut there, looking reverently into his eyes. "I want to see tracks running down your face by dessert."

"You’ll have me in the kitchen?" A laugh threatened on Harry’s lips. "It’s a good thing it’s just the two of us for dinner together tonight, then." 

"You can wear the red apron," Draco said very seriously. 

"Anything else?"

"No," Draco added, eyes swatting up and down his body. "Just the apron. I'll fix up your feet with a warming charm, but I can't abide you naked in socks," he said, noticing that Harry wasn't wearing shoes and had been out with him on the sodden roof for a quarter-hour without complaint, though it was December. "Why are you in socks, by the way?"

_Because I thought you were hurt, dying, dead. Because I will always assume the worst-case scenario because, for me, they always come true. Because by loving you, I've hurt you and will continue to do so, and if I told you any of this, you'd never believe me._

"You caught me by surprise, being up on the roof and all. I made the jump before I could think about footwear." Draco rolled his eyes. 

"Ever the saviour. Next time, put some slippers on, you maniac."

"Will do," Harry demurred. "And thanks for allowing me to cook for you while in an apron; it's ever so kind of you." He thumbed at one of the circles under Draco's eyes, thought of asking him how he'd been sleeping, and if he'd been eating, and well, and what was it that had robbed him of his light—but he didn't. He wrapped his arms around him instead and hugged him tightly, and hoped. Sometimes it was all he could do.

"You’re ever so welcome. You know," Draco said as he held on tight so they could Apparate downstairs together, "I’m feeling much better already."

* * *

**Tuesday, December 9, 2003**

Harry hastily swallowed the last of a falafel wrap, internally cursing that he was in a Muggle part of town and couldn't risk vanishing the greasy paper garbage. He wadded it into a compact ball, ambling from the park where he'd taken a spare moment to wolf a very late lunch down, eyes peeled for a refuse bin.

He felt good. Almost _too_ good, though he was careful these days of letting his neuroses win the small victories of turning every good moment into one riddled with fear. _A bad thing doesn't have to happen because a good thing has_ came to mind, and he breathed deeply, ingesting the thought. It was his current morning mantra, Spell-o-taped to the bathroom mirror. He whispered it aloud in the mornings, though whenever Draco was over, he liked to walk in surreptitiously and say, "A little louder, if you will, Mr. Potter," or "Some enunciation would be of use," his stony face barely concealing the twinkle of mischief in his eyes. He liked pretending to be Harry's diction teacher; Harry was of the mind that he liked playing teacher, period, and was starting to warm up to the idea of throwing on his old Hogwarts tie for some role play.

_Perhaps as a birthday present._

His cheer stemmed from several new sources these days. He'd written and submitted a piece on reconciliations in early December, elucidating his thoughts on where work was required to not merely return the Ministry of Magic to its pre-Voldemort ways but to improve its mandate to serve all magical creatures. Unsurprisingly, Luna accepted it to run in The Quibbler, while to Harry's delight, the Prophet agreed to run it as an op-ed as well. Harry was booked in for interviews on WWN's radio and soon-to-launch television news segments as well, mostly about the memoir, but it was much more fun for him to focus on the present and the future than dwell on the past all the time. Draco sniffed at the final draft but hadn't said a harsh word about it, which was as good as an endorsement in Harry's books. 

The piece of legislation he'd co-sponsored with Hermione on house-elf rights had also recently been ratified. A collective of wealthy and contrite purebloods had come together under the banner of modernization (and, Hermione never forgot to add, tax benefits) to join Harry in creating a trust to fund the livelihoods of any elves that wished to leave their current service. The act was described as a "bomb going off among pureblood society," and the only person more ecstatic to see it happen than Hermione was Draco, who had gotten Harry off over the course of a half-hour solely using a bottle of lube and his fingers when the news had come out. About half of the mail Harry received in response was frothing with stuffy rage, but the rest contained enthusiasm about his new direction, and this filled him with a sense of fulfillment he hadn't felt in long years. His last lunch with members of the Wizengamot went very quickly from chummy to sombrely severe, with propositions from the left about riding this wave of activism to new places and thinly veiled threats from the right about how important maintenance of the status quo was. He wished he could say that he did it all selflessly, but that was a lie. He finally felt like he was reaching for the level of virtuousness attributed to him so readily. And it made Draco look at him with pride, a feeling he was inexorably hooked on.

It was weird, and at times, scary, but he kind of liked it scary anyway. "Trying on new suits," Draco called it. "You're finally opening your eyes to what you can do with your life, Potter." He'd looked back to the morning's paper, hidden behind it as he added the required dig: "You're only, oh, about five years late to the party."

Later that evening, he would see Ron; the invitation to dinner had been set at long last, not even at Hermione’s behest. She swore up and down that she’d taken no part in arranging the meeting and reassured Harry that it would work if it contained apologies from both sides. Harry felt ready for it.

Draco was planning a "proper dinner party," as he put it, for Harry to be appropriately introduced to his friends. There was fish on special order, and Harry had been instructed where to buy a new shirt and the time, date and location of the haircut he'd be submitting to before the event. Harry hoped that he'd be able to respond in kind with his own little do, ideally with his inner circle—Luna would help to smooth over the awkwardness, and Hermione would be game. He could run interference with Ron, and Dean could join in. Neville and Ginny would be for next time, something before Christmas—his stomach clenched up something dreadful when he thought of Christmas.

He took a deep breath and pushed the thought away.

_Worry is for later. One step, one day at a time. What will happen will happen, and you can't control every eventuality. Just breathe._

And though it required back-channelling that Draco would disapprove of, Harry had called in a favour or three to have Draco's dismissal reversed. It would come down to a conversation between himself and Kingsley, probably, finally cashing in one of the many IOUs that had accumulated over the years. The odds were in Draco’s favour, and he’d never have to know what part Harry had played in the whole affair, and so what if he wanted to do a nice thing for his partner? If nobody knew about it, it would be like it never happened in the first place.

 _And you're the reason he was fired in the first place_ , Harry was always quick to remind himself. He had no proof, of course, but it fit a pattern, the kind of pattern that only Harry had ever been able to see. Things around him cracked and broke all the time, and others were too kind to attribute the breakage to him, but he knew in his heart when things were his fault, and at least this time, he knew what he could do to fix it.

Victoria didn't know about this clandestine plan of Harry's—couldn't, it would give her a heart attack, to learn of Harry trying to play the Minister of Magic for what amounted to a personal favour—but that was for the best. She'd started biting her nails since Harry had told her of Draco, had hand-delivered a roll of scrolls in dense legalese to have him sign.

"I'm not forcing my boyfriend to take an Unbreakable Vow that he'll never speak ill of me in the press, for the rest of time," Harry had scoffed at the first page, assuming it to be a joke. Victoria swallowed, a solemn look on her face.

"Sleep on it," she said, patting Harry's hand. "He's pretty, and the pretty ones are the worst during a breakup." Harry started to interrupt, but she looked suspiciously earnest, so he bit his tongue. "Take it from me."

"But I'm not his _employer_ , Vic! If we break up, it's not like he gets a severance package to keep him from calling me names. I can't—I couldn't—"

"Just," she held up a hand, mangled manicure and all, "sleep on it. Read them first, in their entirety, and let him decide what he's comfortable with, and what you're comfortable with."

Harry hadn't done a good enough job pretending that the sheets were boring work-related papers, and Draco had nipped them from under his arm and was dissecting them himself. It gave him something to do, one more thing to keep busy, though even without work, he seemed as busy as ever.

He was continuing with self-directed studies from home that Harry couldn't begin to comprehend. Experiments were nearly always bubbling on the hob, a second cauldron set up in his study. The ever-present boiling leant his flat an antiseptic scent, like a clinic waiting room, and so much excess moisture hanging in the air that his windows were beaded continuously with condensation. Draco would look up, a bubble-head charm in place so that he could listen to his "working music"—dull, strange ambient loops and classical pieces—and make loud declarations about the exciting properties of hydrogen, or abruptly stand and rush off to another room, returning with a book that looked older than time itself. This frantic, constant interest in his favoured subject was probably what Harry found most endearing about him.

Draco was a nerd—a terrible, irrepressible, verging-on-mad-scientist level nerd—and even the loss of his apprenticeship and the 9-to-5 position that went along with it wasn't enough to keep him from reaching for more knowledge. Harry had picked up that his work was on water purification and synthesis, but Draco didn't regale him with much in the way of explanations beyond that. He was out of the house more often too, running even in sleet, and dancing, Harry had learned, though doing exactly what kind and when was sort of an enigma. His was frenetic energy, and Harry slowed in the face of it.

It made sense now; what seemed liked sickness had just been stress piled on top of a personality that leaned into pressure instead of away from it. Draco thrived on full days, preferred to be so engrossed in a project that he forgot to eat, would rather die than be bored. In response to all the movement, Harry had to go in the other direction. Poured him cups of tea and pretended that his hamstrings were tight to trick him into a proper stretch. Drew hot baths and then pulled him into them, holding him still until his slippery spine stopped trying to writhe about; until his breaths came quietly and the tension in his shoulders bled from them.

Things were, in a word, good. Calm, even when they weren’t, like the scene in the streets now, only a few weeks out from Christmas. Shoppers bustled about as Mariah Carey belted out from car radios and fairy lights twinkled on as dusk fell a little earlier each day, and Harry's spirits were buoyed.

He hummed—off-tune, he knew—aiming for a rubbish bin and sinking the wad of garbage into it easily. He grinned; just one last errand—a silly thing, he didn't know why he couldn't do it tomorrow—and he would be off to make up with one of his best friends, and then home, _home_ , to Draco. He could hardly wait.

Turning onto a quiet street, he scanned the signs over the mantles of the shops, looking for the one he'd been tasked to find. It was to pick up a muff, or gloves or something equally banal. He dug into his pocket to fish out the note with Tom's familiar handwriting scratched into it, and when he looked up, it was to a collision of skin and bone, an accidental smear of wetness at his lips and cheek.

He fell back against a wall as he winced from the sudden, sharp pain of butting heads.

" _Fuck_ —er, sorry! I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking—"

"Don’t be like that," the person who’d walked into him said, and though his eyes were watering and his glasses fully askew, he could tell that the face coming close to a second time was that of Justin Finch-Fletchley. And he wasn’t coming in close—he closed the distance between them, hand to Harry's cheek and locked onto Harry’s lips with a cold kiss that tasted faintly of pennies. 

Blood. Blood, Harry realized as he pushed Justin away and spat scarlet onto the pavement. Blood from a broken lip, his own—the same blood he could feel roiling inside of him and thumping into the lump growing on his forehead. He was hurt and confused and so entirely angry that for a moment, he saw white. 

He held up a hand, rage taking the reins and could only watch as Justin sailed backwards through the air and slammed into the trunk of a tree, breath rushing from him in one hard push. There were more sounds from behind him—one, like the crack of a whip; another, a deep sound that shook the very earth beneath his feet, as though a bomb had gone off nearby. When he turned, it was too late to discern if anyone out of the ordinary had been there, and so much was happening that he could hardly concentrate on anything at all. Car alarms began to wail, and debris fell from the building across the street, loose bits of brick and mortar raining down onto the deserted stretch of pavement. One chunk hit a streetlamp, its splintering smash also leaving the bit of street curiously dark instead of bathed in a hearty yellow glow. A chorus of confused yells started up as heads poked out of windows and the cabs on the street slowed, wheels turning slowly in the brown slush from the road. 

"Have you gone completely fucking mad?" Harry barked. His training kicked in as he stalked over to the street and took in the points around and above him—a couple had been walking by and were now stopped, pointing at the smashed streetlamp, but were too far to have clearly made out the magic at play—and there was no one visible in the skies above. Harry drew his wand and cast a diagnostic spell that threw a faintly glowing net. It detected no deception or dark magic, not even on Justin, which meant that he wasn’t under the Imperius Curse or duress. He _was_ intent on snogging Harry come hell or high water, though, apparently. 

"Oh, come on, Harry!" He crouched, doubled over with his hands on knees, wheezing. "No need for all that," he said, gesturing at the dent left in the sapling’s spine. He winced upon standing, and Harry was glad for it.

"Sounded like it hurt," Harry growled, wiping his chin.

Justin gave a dry laugh. "It did."

Harry wanted to break things—his finger bones would be a good start—but took a step back instead. He grit his teeth and forced in a breath—in through his mouth, out through his nose. He had to be very, very careful not to lose control.

_Any more than you already have, you mean._

Draco's voice floated through his mind—

_"Unbridled magic is for babies,"_

—and he cursed himself internally. He didn't want to be a loose cannon; he tried to be calm and reasonable, even in the face of lunacy. He spat red into the gutter, as composed as he could be asked to be, considering the circumstances.

"Good. What the fuck was that?" He gestured broadly, trying to encompass _kissing me by force like a deranged person_ in the movement of his arm.

"An opportunity," Justin said. He looked at Harry with admiration, even as one of his eyes kept cringing shut.

"You're not making any sense," Harry said. He holstered his wand up his sleeve, available at a moment's notice. Justin wasn't a threat, not a real one, anyway. He wasn't delicate, but he wasn't here to fight. That much was clear.

"I told you, I'm not interested."

"You’re just—you don’t get it, do you?"

Harry wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The rage was dissipating, and in its place, confusion began to lap at his thoughts. 

"What’s there to get? I’ve told you—not interested. End of story."

"Your interest doesn’t matter so much," Justin said, straightening up at last with a keening sound of pain. Harry prayed it was a cracked rib, at the very least.

"We don’t even have to be intimate. It can be all show." He smiled, clearly insane, even as Harry shook his head, willing the situation to end. "I’m fine with all show, to be completely honest."

"You’ve lost it. I said I’m _not interested—"_

"What’s the plan, eh, Harry?" Justin brushed splinters from one shoulder, picking the larger chunks out of the wool. "Advocating for Death Eater rights? Is that going to be your next little crusade?"

Harry felt a chill that had nothing to do with the misty drizzle falling around them. The sirens approaching from all directions faded into nothing—background noise. And Justin smiled, coy and cold in its own way, and took a few small steps towards him. 

"What did you just say?" Harry's voice broke, and he took an involuntary step back.

"Let’s not pretend, Harry. You have goals—ah, don’t interrupt me now—you do. Whether you admit it or not, you’ve made plans. Big plans, too."

"It's my life," Harry whispered. Justin's smile turned simpering like Harry was some childlike idiot in need of explaining.

"It's that you like upsetting things, Harry. Don't get me wrong, it's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just—you're never content with the old ways of doing things. Traditional ways."

Justin bit his lip and released it, mock-demure. It disconcerted him, how quickly the jovial mask melted and how what was left behind could suddenly be so mechanical. Ruthless. 

"Don't come any closer," Harry warned, and Justin raised his hands and halted his approach. But the smile, the smile wouldn't quit, not for anything.

"I know this is all a bit heavy-handed—not my idea, trust me—but something had to be done."

"Spit it out, won't you? I've half a mind to have you arrested." Harry was starting to sweat, and the want to hyperventilate rose in him. Why hadn't he Apparated away already? What was it that kept him rooted to the spot and listening to this diatribe, as insane as it seemed on the surface?

 _It's because this is the threat you get to see, which means there's a threat elsewhere, too. Keep him talking, and he might show his hand. Keep him talking, and the Aurors might show up_. _Maybe someone else can come and save you, for once._

"The old guard get a bit nervy when upstarts come in talking about _reparations_ and _rights for all_." Justin's eyes crinkled when he smiled, which was unnerving because Harry thought it to be a false smile. But perhaps this really was his idea of fun. "Starts to sound a lot like _a revolution_ , and that’s bad for business."

"What’s this all got to do with Death Eaters?" Harry asked. A tarry pit was opening up inside him, a place that wasn’t safe. He felt sick.

"Exactly." Justin cocked his head, blue eyes glinting in the low light. "What’s the Saviour got to do with those unsavoury types?"

"Are you threatening me?" 

_Draco. He's threatening Draco. You need to check on Draco._

Justin bit the edge of his lip, still smiling. The bottom one was swelling fast—he looked lascivious when he licked it and left it wet.

"I wouldn’t dream of it. You know," he added conversationally, "my Father is good friends with Robards. They were the same year at Hogwarts."

Harry took another step back, closer to the edge of the park, and tried to swallow against a throat gone dry. Dizziness was creeping in from their crash, and he realized that one pane of his glasses had fully popped out; he swiped the ruined frames from his face, deciding it was better to take in the situation as a blur. It made it less real and, therefore, easier to digest.

"My cousin Ithaca, she runs most of the building contracts east of Germany for the old guard. Could go a long way in expediting your home for lonely waifs project."

"Is this about money? If it's about money, we can talk." Harry let the wheels turn in his head, figuring it was best to keep Justin talking, even though his gut screamed at him to leave. "Though it is my money, and I should be allowed to do what I will with it."

Justin _tsked_ him, dropping hands into his pockets.

"Harry, this is about appearances. You've got a place in our society, and you must uphold certain standards. You and me? We look good together. We'd look _so_ good together, don't you think?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't much go in for public appearances."

Justin sighed. "See, and that's what we could work on. We don't rock boats. We could sail smoothly _together_. We could even take others romantically if we were discrete about it." He let that word, _discrete_ , hang in the air, accusing Harry with it.

"You'd have access like never before—the kind of access that gets cut off when you start associating with undesirables. People lower than your station. You know the type."

"Do I?" Harry asked. There was no questioning now that he knew something of Draco. Whether he was guessing or had proof, that was the question.

"What do you know about him?" This time, Justin laughed intensely. It echoed back at them from a brick wall at twenty paces, a chorus of laughter at Harry's expense. Harry bristled, and something else exploded. Another streetlamp, though within the park, this time. Darkness was fast descending all around them even though the scene on the street only grew louder, but he didn't have the energy to spare caring about all the evidence of outbursts he was leaving behind in his wake.

"You think this is funny? This is my life you're laughing about. I'm not just going to just go with you because it's easier when I'm the Ministry's puppet."

"Oh, come on now, Harry—"

"No!" Harry yelled, taking a step towards Justin with his fist raised. Justin only blinked at him, and Harry lowered it.

_You'll get him back for this, but not this way, not with your fists. Hit him where it hurts—in public. Bring him down for this, him and his father, and fucking Robards—_

"I don't work for them anymore. They can't pull my strings like they used to."

"I know enough, Harry. Too much, if I'm honest." He grimaced and faked a retch. "And if I know enough, think what the people bigger than you, and I know. Now, for Pete's sake, let me clean you up, let's have a pint and talk this—"

"You're bluffing," Harry said. He huffed a laugh, but Justin only cocked his head, stepped closer, dangerously close. Harry could smell him now, like musk and gasoline over the petrichor smell of rain, and the tang of blood running down the back of this throat. A dangerous combination; explosive, deadly. 

"You haven't said anything more than what they'd run in a gossip rag."

He stepped in a little closer still, leaning in above Harry's shoulder.

"I know that someone has a friend that owes the NHS a lot more than an apology," he said quietly. He turned to speak directly into Harry's ear, close enough that they could kiss, the low rumble sufficient to drive a shiver down his spine. "And I know that you deserve a lot better than being left with certain needs un-reciprocated on a rooftop."

It was like the street dropped out from underneath Harry's feet. He stepped back, sure that it would be backwards and into a pit a thousand feet down. There was no telling when the free-fall would end. 

"Leave us alone," he heard himself say, and then he was running, deeper into the darkness of the park, the closest place he could Disapparate without causing a fuss. He had to get to Draco, now, before it was too late.

He went first to Draco's, but the flat was empty, warm and steaming. Then, Grimmauld, and just in case, the apothecary, which he knew to be closed for the day. Just in case—what? In case Draco was hanging around his old job site? After coming up empty, Harry realized he still had a terrible sense of what Draco did with his own time. Who he saw, where he actually went—these were generally blind spots, glaringly large now that he needed to know.

Distraught, he went home at last to wash his face and attempt a _Reparo_ at his glasses. He sat in nervous silence at the kitchen table, a cup of tea brought to him sitting untouched. Kreacher eyed him warily before he finally left the house, bound for Hogwarts. He was going to be late to get to Ron and Hermione's at this rate, but that was such a distant problem it hardly registered, joining the circuit of frenzied, buzzing thoughts in his brain.

Draco entered through the Floo upstairs an hour later, sweeping into the dining room. Harry was so deeply engrossed in his thoughts and worries, looped, his forehead pressed to the table that he hadn't heard him arrive.

"Ah, wonderful, you're here," Draco said. His cheeks were rosy-red from the cold, the scent of it clinging to his clothes. He carried a brown paper bag in one hand and smiled warmly at Harry as soon as he stepped into the room. The house took its cue, a soft glow infusing the room while a fire sprung to life in the hearth, and the radio clicked on.

"Draco," Harry breathed. He pushed up to stand immediately, and Draco gave him a quizzical look, putting the bag down on the table as he pulled his shearling-lined gloves off and set them down.

"Yes, it's me. What's got you in a twist?" he said. "And look at you—what's happened to your lip?"

"We have to talk," Harry tried again, hands out, trying to seize him to stop all his needless moving. He needed to tell him right now that there was danger, there were agents who wished him, them, harm, they knew, the same people who had sent Harry cards with well-wishes only a few months ago knew, now, and didn't like who he'd been playing with and they would hurt him, Draco, if Harry wasn't careful—Harry hadn't been thorough, and he had to warn Draco, they knew who he cared for, and they would seek to destroy it, they—

"I'm hardly late. Give me a second, alright?" Draco took a step back, playfully holding himself just out of Harry's grip. Harry clutched a chair-back, knuckles milk-white.

"Draco," he said, "listen—"

"What?" His eyes sparkled, a mischievous twist to his smile. That Harry's thoughts were jagged and rapid, this wasn't new to him, wasn't enough to be concerned about.

_You've cried wolf before, worrying over nothing, and now he won't listen—_

_"_ I needed to do some shopping that you absolutely may _not_ ask me about—"

The announcer's voice on the WWN 2 news update was a familiar rumble in the room, and they usually paid only the barest attention to the updates, as banal as they generally were. As though on cue, the name _Harry Potter_ floated out from the radio, and Draco's attention flicked over to it.

"... _Harry Potter's latest love caught on camera! Our intrepid reporters caught the hero of the last Great War snogging none other than the young Hogwarts professor Justin Finch-Fletchley earlier today while out doing some Christmas shopping. Laying to rest rumours..."_

"No," Draco said simply. Harry took a step towards him, and he backed into the sideboard in a flash, quick as anything. The pyramid of glassware perched there tinkled dangerously as the announcer droned on about Harry's alleged lover, and even though Harry could hear the words, they no longer made sense to his ears. 

"Draco," he swallowed, trying to get Draco to look him in the eye, "you've got to listen to me—"

"No," he breathed, head shaking like a tremor, back and forth. He kept blinking, staring at some unseen thing on the floor between them. "No, no, no—"

Harry lurched forward to grab him by his shoulders. "It's not what it looks like, this—"

When Draco spun out of the way, he flinched, pulling his arms in tightly to his body. Harry saw the look, and it stopped him in his tracks, just as the fire in the hearth shuddered, and the lights dimmed. It was like a wound to either of them had become a wound to the house; it couldn't maintain the bright cheer in the face of the sharp pain Harry felt like a stab to the heart.

"Don't you _touch_ me." Draco heaved breaths, just out of Harry's range of reach.

"I wasn't—I won't. I would—"

He couldn't say it. Couldn't choke out, _"I would never try to hurt you, never touch you like that,"_ because he had.

Because he hurt people. That's what he did. He was a destroyer of things, most especially people, and here he was, destroying one more.

"Draco," Harry pleaded against a throat corded so tightly he feared his voice would crack and he wouldn't be able to speak at all, not even to plead. "Please, let me explain. Please, I'm begging you," Harry could feel his heart banging against the cage of his ribs, fear rising in him and making him desperate, "I love–"

"NO!" Draco exploded, his shout renting the air.

Harry was surprised into silence, all energy draining from him. He leaned against the table for support, palms on the worn wood, grounding him and just barely keeping him standing.

Draco was looking at him now, but Harry didn't stand a chance in making him see. 

"Don't you fucking _dare_ say that word to me, you liar. You _liar_ , how could you?" The shape of his face contorted into something ugly, unrefined. A confused frown pulled at it, hurt making him look small. 

Harry wished he were livid instead, that he was purple in the face with rage. That he could talk down, could take his lashings from. Instead, he got this; betrayal and his eyes shining wetly.

"How could you?" He repeated, quieter this time. "With him?"

If it were possible to feel heartbreak as physical pain, Harry would have felt it then, like his heart was ripping in two. He wished he could disappear into a cloud of dust, could go back in time, could undo everything that had led to him being the cause of the anguish on Draco's face.

"I've made myself so _small_ to be loved by you," the corners of Draco's lips quivered downwards, even as he blinked up at the ceiling, losing the battle to tears. "For the chance to one day be loved by you. Do you know that?"

Harry knew better than to say anything. He was breathless, and Draco was either building to a crescendo of rage or was on his way to falling apart, and Harry needed to wait and to be there, whichever way it went. The way he kept shaking his head as though trying to shake the story loose from his skull, his confusion and his pain crystal clear. 

"I’ve tried so hard to be exactly what you need, what you want when you want it," he said, voice gone breathy. "I made myself pliable for you, just as fuckable as you like. Do you know that time, after Bagman's party, I actually thought you might want me?"

Harry's jaw unstuck, his tongue peeling from the roof of his mouth. Making words felt like heavy work.

"I do want you. Of course I want you—"

"Not just to fuck, you sod," Draco spat. "I meant to date me. I thought you might be interested in me as a person. Me!" He gave a hollow laugh, sucking in his lower lip to bite at it. "And me, being the picture of a perfect fucking idiot—that's not what you wanted at all. You wanted something easy, convenient, and I've been that for you. I’ve stayed that for you. You _idiot_ , Draco," he hissed, and then he slapped himself, the sound an angry crack and the cheek he hit so suddenly angry red that Harry hardly believed it was real. "You stupid, stupid idiot." He did it again, and this time Harry raised his hand, feeling his magic spring up as though from a deep reservoir, holding it back at the last second from escaping his fingertips. He couldn't control Draco, would never lose control and let his magic free on him again, not even when seeing Draco hurt cost him something.

"Stop it, please! You're not an idiot, Draco," Harry said, but Draco just shook his head all the harder. "I'm the problem." Harry slapped his hands roughly against his chest. "I was a coward, then. I wanted—" he broke off. He'd wanted more then, wanted so deeply that his want felt like an infinite well, but it sounded false, to only bring it up now. "I'm sorry you think that. I never meant for you to feel this way."

Draco stilled his head, though he shook. It started in his hands; he clenched them, trying to control the spread.

"You never mean much of anything, do you?" Draco was snarling now, the anger swooping in to protect him. He stared Harry down, clutching at his sides to try to quell shaking that fast becoming obvious. Harry wanted to hold him so badly, to soothe this pain that he hadn't meant to cause, but he held his own hands balled into fists at his sides to keep from reaching out again.

"I made sure not to ask for too much because I was afraid of losing you. You, you're all I've wanted." His voice broke, and he sniffed, wiped his nose with his shirtsleeve. "I—" A high, tight sound came from him—words not quite forming, smothered on their way out of his throat. 

"You're all I ever asked for. Do you know that?"

Harry let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, and Draco gave a dim laugh, a dark little thing with no joy in it.

"And I'm not enough," he said. He turned away, clenching his eyes tightly together. "Of course, I'm not. Who'd want me, right? Spoiled goods and all."

"Don't say that." The sconces on the walls momentarily flickered higher as a spike of his old friend Fury kicked up inside of him. Harry tightened his fists, wishing for all the world that Lucius Malfoy was around so he could pummel him into a runny pulp for seeding the belief of worthlessness so deeply within Draco's psyche.

"I've never been enough for you. _Fuck._ " He yelled, turning from Harry to push the heels of his hands into his eyes. His breathing was going strange, too much out and not enough in. "Stupid, stupid, stupid—"

"That's not true. Please, Draco, I can explain."

"Explain what, Harry? We were never meant to work. And now you, with _him_ , I, I—" 

He was a blur, then, stomping around the table to the hearth to grab the jar of Floo powder.

"Don't come to my flat," he said, struggling to open the lid of the jar. He fumbled, and it smashed on the hearthstones, shards of blue bisque against the dark grey slate. Harry stared at the spot and swallowed around the lump in his throat, thinking of all the notes buried there.

 _I think of you every second of the day._

Draco startled at the sound of the break but didn’t slow down, throwing so much powder into the flames that they roared a deep emerald, expelling a warm rush of air into the room. "Just leave me alone, I mean it. You can show me that modicum of respect, can't you?" He aimed his words over his shoulder at Harry.

"I can explain," Harry reached out for his hand, and this time Draco didn't flinch. He traced his thumb down the back of his knuckles, purpled from poor circulation and rough from work, and gods but Harry wanted to twine their fingers together and draw him closer. When he looked up, it was directly into the stormy eyes he'd come to know so well, swimming and tight with pain. He took a step closer, dared to place a careful hand at his shoulder, sliding it up to caress his neck.

"Please," Harry whispered, "please don't leave. I can explain." Harry leaned in for a kiss, nothing more than a press of his lips against Draco's full and soft. Draco's eyelids shut, and he exhaled, a faltering breath for Harry to breathe in. He felt perfect in Harry's hands, and for a second, Harry was sure that the kiss was all he needed to calm down, back away from the fire. "Don't do this."

Draco leaned away and searched his eyes, pursing his lips to let out a long, shaky breath. He stepped away, peeling Harry's hand from his neck and letting it drop between them. "Leave me alone. Do you hear me?" Draco whispered the words as he lost the battle with the welling tears in his eyes and two fat drops fell, painting trails down into the hollows of his cheeks.

"Yes," Harry said. "Of course. It's not what it looks like. You've got to believe me."

Draco's eyes flicked from Harry's face to the bag on the table and back to him.

"Have a Happy Christmas, Harry," he said, and then he bowed his back and took a step inside, and was gone. 

* * *

**Notes** : Yikes! Hate to drop a chapter that ends in a cliff-hanger, but needs must!

Thank you, faithful readers and commenters. I love to read them; thanks for keeping them coming :)

I'll be in isolation at home through mid-December, which means plenty of time for writing and editing. Next chapter by **Friday, December 4**.


	16. Such Pretty Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confessions, questions, answers and a fair bit of stalking.

* * *

**Tuesday, December 9, 2003**

Entering via the Floo in the living room, Harry could see all the telltale signs of a child's recent visit to Ron and Hermione's flat. A half-finished puzzle lay on the carpet, various historical members of the Cannons zooming across the stitched together tiles; Ron's ancient red knit baby blanket was heaped on the couch; and loose pieces of enchanted Lego had escaped their bin, one of which lodged itself immediately into the tread of his trainer. He picked it free and fixated on it, pushing down on it to quell the urge to yell or scream or cry. Cherry red, a perfect little cube with a round nib at the top, it was a solid sharpness between his thumb and pointer finger. He pulsed his fingers into it, relaxing again, tensing. It hurt, but only a little. It was real, he was real, Hermione and Ron's flat was as soothingly real as anything could be. He snapped back to reality as a door creaked shut, a flash of light from the bedroom down the hall extinguishing.

Hermione's voice punctuated the silence. Her head was bowed as she leaned against the wall in the hallway.

"Yes! It's been great—no, no, don't put uncle Mark on the phone, we already—okay. Hi Mark! Yes, good to hear from you—Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay then, so could you put Dad back on the phone? Dad, we'll talk Friday, okay? Yes, he's been eating great. No, we don't buy our lettuce from Sainsbury's, listen—Yes." She sighed loudly, shifting weight from one foot to the other, the floorboards creaking under her. 

She hadn't noticed him yet, and with three quick steps, Harry dipped into the kitchen. On auto-pilot, he figured he'd grab a beer or seven from the fridge and wait for Ron to find him, but was surprised to find Ron leaning at the counter, enraptured by a mobile phone in his own hand. A wooden spoon and spatula stirred a bubbling pot and pushed around chopped onions, garlic and ginger in a pan behind him. He wore the standard white shirt and charcoal trousers of the Auror uniform, albeit with the cloak left draped over a chair at the dining table and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hopelessly wrinkled. His forearms were thicker than the last time Harry had seen him, crisscrossed with old scars and new veins. He was bulking up—Ron always had taken training seriously, much more so than he ever had any subject in school.

"You're not looking very regulation there, mate," Harry said. Ron flicked his eyes up to him as he put the phone down on the counter.

"I like to cook in uniform. Mione says the spices respect me more this way. Less likely to burn everything."

"You've got a mobile now?"

He dipped his chin in a nod of confirmation. "New standard issue item. I don't like that the buttons are microscopic, but I don't have much choice but to get on with it, do I?"

"What's with you purebloods and your trouble with buttons?" Harry shook his head. Ron's expression didn't change—a good sign, considering Harry had so quickly made a comment that encompassed both Ron and Draco, even if it hadn't been explicitly said. Harry cleared his throat. 

"What's on?" he asked, taking a stool at the island between them. Ron's eyes didn't leave his all the while.

"Duck massaman. The sauce came tinned, so you don't have to worry about chunks of peppercorn in, this time." Harry meant to smile but found he couldn't force it yet. He felt cold, rattled. "You look like shit," Ron said, eyeing him more closely as Hermione walked in, with a little, "Oh!" of surprise.

"Sorry, Harry, I didn't hear you come in. Dad still refuses to wear his hearing aids," she said by way of explanation to the incredible volume of her phone conversation. "I was going to be off before you came over, only my meeting was cancelled and—"

"It's fine, Mione," Harry said. He tried for a smile again and managed something. A look of worry flashed over her face, which he ignored, turning his attention back to Ron. "Listen, I'm sorry—"

"Naw," Ron raised a hand, turning his face away. "I'm the one who's sorry. I was shocked, is all. The whole," he sucked his teeth, gathering breath, " _Malfoy_ thing. It was a bit much to take, all at once."

"I can appreciate that," Harry said. He didn't know how his voice remained even; when the shock of what had just happened with Draco would actually set in.

Ron kneaded his thumb, the nail blackened and bruised, then set his hands on the counter's edge at his hips. 

"Still no reason for exploding the way I did."

They all stood in silence, Harry doing his best work, not remembering the moment in any vivid terms. That was then; this was now.

"I was out of line," Harry said, at last, "and I apologize." Ron nodded.

"Yeah. You were."

A toasting seed on the stove popped, and Ron turned to take over from the automated movements of the spatula, breaking something stuck to the pan off and lowering the flame under it with a flick of his wand. Hermione looked from him to Harry, back again, and huffed, entering the room properly.

"Honestly, you two, that's all it took. Weeks, Ronald, weeks!" She walked over to Harry and engulfed him in a tight hug, releasing him with a smile. She was shiny with sweat, in spandex and one of Ron's old t-shirts. "I'm about to have a large glass of wine, unless you'd rather me not?"

"No, go ahead," Harry said. He tried to smile again, and it didn't work. He was already thinking about gaining a bottle of cheap blended whisky after all the niceties were done and drowning in it back home. If he could hold it together for the moment, he could get away with anything. 

She nodded, rubbing at a crick in her neck. "I can do you a soda and bitters?"

"Sure," he said. "Is wine the recommended post-yoga drink these days?" 

She scoffed. "It's pilates, and Luna says she's drinking kombucha the entire time, but I know full-well she spikes hers with additional 'drinking vinegar,' so she's half-cut while we're doing it. If I want a glass of wine afterwards, I will not be stopped."

Hermione's hand lingered on his shoulder as she pulled away, and Harry snatched out and grabbed it.

"You're shining, Hermione," he said softly, turning her hand left and right to better inspect the slight silver band and the shining diamond wrapping her ring finger. She grinned and sucked in her bottom lip, glancing at Ron. Harry looked over to him as well, and knew, then, that it had happened. They were both the picture of unbridled joy.

"I—we—" she stumbled. "It just happened."

"Haven't even told Mum and Dad yet," Ron added, beaming at her.

A tightness in his chest grew, felt like it would peak soon, and he'd choke, either from tears of happiness for his friends or from agony at how distant his own chance at true love felt in that moment. He had the crazy feeling rise up in him that this would be a great time to scream and throw things.

But he quelled it and smiled, finally, the perfect, practiced smile that he'd hardly had any use for in long months. This was a feeling he could quell, and would because he had to, for them.

"It's beautiful," he said, and he meant it, as Hermione removed her hand from his grip and smiled demurely at it. "Really. I'm so happy for you two. About time," he added in an undertone.

 _He didn't tell you._ The uncharitable thought bubbled up, in that voice he wished he could make shut up. He wanted to pretend that Ron simply hadn't needed a pep talk, had gone through with a proposal all on his own, but Harry knew him too well for that. _It was probably Neville who helped him figure it out. Because he didn't want you, didn't need you, and even if he'd asked, you're barely there for him. You're never there when people need you._

Ron flicked his wand, sending a dribble of water to splash him in the face. Harry was fast and sent up a shield charm, dispersing the stream into a fine mist.

"Boys!" Hermione warned, and they both raised their wand hands, pointing them at the ceiling, grips loosened. They knew better than to draw up her wrath by fooling around in the kitchen again.

"There will be _no_ talk of delayed proposals in this house. We're still in school, for Merlin's sake! Mione's going back in the spring, and I'll be in training for another year, at least. How we're supposed to plan a wedding _and_ move on from this flat," Ron shook his head, tasting the sauce and making a surprisingly pleased sound.

"What's wrong with this one?" Harry asked. Ron's wide blue eyes grew even wider, a warning sign. Hermione cleared her throat.

"Well, this one's not exactly, er, _family_ - _sized_ , and we'll need some room to grow."

His ribs compressed another inch, the breath nearly knocked out of him.

 _They're moving on,_ the Voice said, _without you. They don't need you—nobody needs you._

"In London?" Harry asked, and she nodded, readjusting her hair into a frizzy ponytail. 

"Of course," she said. She looked into his face a mite too long, probably detecting the worry with which he'd asked. "We'd never spring a big move on you like that, Harry, and besides, we love London. Though with the prices in the neighbourhoods that are either magical or edging along them..." She winced dramatically. 

_They're going to have to go. To move away and start a family without you around. Draco's gone already, and soon it'll just be you alone in the old house, the way it was always meant to be. Kreacher will die, and your friends will stop visiting and—_

"Let me buy you a flat," Harry said. Hermione stilled her fidgeting with the wilting basil plant she was forever trying to keep alive, and Ron stopped mid-stir.

"Before either of you try to talk me out of it, please just let me do this. I'm shite with gifts, you both know it. And I'm still invited to the wedding, right?"

"Don't even joke—"

"Are you _kidding_ me, mate? You're my best man—"

Hermione and Ron's twin expressions of shock, the immediate _Harry_ at their lips, was too much to bear.

"Joking!" Harry said, hands up, exuberant as he was supposed to be. His lungs were barely working, he thought—he felt like he was drowning in plain air, but he could pretend. He was so very good at pretending, and he had to. He owed them this—an evening together without him being the center of attention, without causing them to worry. "I'm only joking. I'd crash it anyway if I weren't invited."

"Not funny," Hermione grouched. They both relaxed, Hermione sidling in next to Ron to peer into the fridge while he went back to stirring, dumping the promised jar of sauce into the pan.

That he'd even ask, even semi-jokingly laid bare too clearly how little stock he put into the steadfastness of their friendship. To them, it was bedrock. To him, it was thin, plaster—something that could be broken through or worn away, something that had to be checked in on.

Harry ran a hand through his hair, fingers finding the outline of the bump left behind from his earlier collision. He wiped the hand on his trouser leg, unsure if there'd be blood at his fingertips.

"You can pick it out yourself, enough rooms for all the future Weasley's—"

"Granger-Weasley's," Hermione corrected.

"Of course—Granger-Weasley's. It would make _me_ happy to do it. Maybe it'll soften up Molly, my chipping in towards the next generation."

"You, I mean, uh," Ron looked sternly at the floor before turning his gaze to Hermione, and at her nod, finally at Harry. "Yeah. Sure." He cleared his throat as though that might rid it of the emotion behind his words. "That would be huge, mate."

"So," Harry concentrated on the pattern of the Formica countertop, uncomfortable at the possible oncoming outburst of sentiment from his friend, one that would leave both of them awkward and confused at how to best dispel the awkwardness. Having retrieved the necessary bottle, Hermione lined up glasses on the counter and tapped them, monitoring the appropriate ingredients pouring into each one. "You'll be sitting the sergeant's exam, then?" Harry asked. Ron took a deep breath and nodded, taking a proffered pint of beer from Hermione and tapping it first against her wine glass, then Harry's tumbler. "Yeah. Bit mental, I know, going at it one year out from getting constable, but," he shrugged, "why wait, I figure. Are you..."

Ron let the question dangle. 

"Am I what?" Harry asked the countertop. Ron would think he was evasive because the topic of work had come up, which bought him a little more time to learn how to breathe properly again. It was getting harder, he realized—the pretending. 

"Are you planning on coming back?" Ron asked. Hermione put down her glass of wine and waited, just as interested in his answer as Ron was. 

Harry put one hand in his pocket and pushed the Lego piece into his thumb again, staring into the ice of his drink. _In, out_.

He wondered, absently, when the rush of feeling would overtake him. It was as though a bomb had gone off at Grimmauld place, and he was waiting to see if it was most appropriate to wait until the main course, or perhaps dessert before he'd politely let his friends know that everything dear to him was on fire, smouldering, and couldn't they please excuse him so he could go tend to the mess?

"I'm not sure," he said, at last, because it was the truth, and that had become his easiest option, lately. By the time he looked up, he wasn't sure how much time had passed, but Hermione had put on some music, something complicated and jazzy crackling out from their beloved secondhand speaker system. "I just don't know. It doesn't feel simple anymore—I can't explain it. I need time to really think about it, and I don't have a lot of that at the moment."

"You have been busy, haven't you been?" Hermione rubbed between his shoulders, and Harry managed a tight smile at his drink in acknowledgement.

"You could say that. A couple more weeks, the book release, all the press and then—poof. My time's my own again. And I'm not entirely sure what happens after that."

"I'm sure Draco has some ideas," Hermione said, sparing a look to Ron as she settled into the barstool next to Harry's. Ron, for his part, didn't flinch. Harry felt a sharp pang, remembered the look on Draco's face as the tears he'd inadvertently caused spilled. 

_Don't_ , he thought, _don't go there._

He closed his eyes against the memory and thought back instead to Draco beaming at him, gently teasing the idea of a vacation. Italy, with its tiny share plates of food, and ancient art, and Draco in diamonds, in dresses, in high-shine shoes that Harry would buy for him, gladly, for them to explore New York City in. He could pretend by latching on to _before._

"He, uh, does, in fact." He sighed and settled into his chair, slouching, elbows on the counter. "Something about Italy and shopping. He doesn't mind a bit of shopping," he said, catching Hermione's smirk at the comment.

"How was it, exactly that you two, uh," Ron blew his breath out, looking lost. "Started?"

"Met. I like met, it's," Harry puffed out his cheeks, "it works."

"Is that the word we're using?" Ron's lips twisted to the side, the one-eyed-frown of _are we really doing this_ settling in. He flicked a look Hermione's way and dropped the face, smacked his lips together.

 _"_ I mean, I'm over it, or maybe I'm getting over it, the whole Malfoy bit, but um, I still haven't a clue how this came to be. And I don't like imagining, I'd rather just," he swallowed hard, steeling himself, "know."

Harry raised a brow, looking from him to Hermione. He crossed his arms on the countertop, leaned into it. He could stare at the pink and grey and stained yellow dots forever and never quite make out the pattern of it, and that was good. Something easy to let his vision blur out, a puzzle that couldn't be solved.

"Met is a good way to put it. I think of it like meeting someone new, basically." He wondered if a technician had ever slipped in images to these seemingly random patterns. If perhaps they were just as special as the seeing-eye posters. Dolphins hid in tabletops and spotted mushrooms appearing from drab wallpaper. Nothing came to him when he stared at the countertop, but perhaps he needed to try harder.

"About the Malfoy thing. He's still Draco Malfoy—I know that. I didn't suddenly develop amnesia."

Ron's lips tightened involuntarily, but he kept quiet. Harry continued, swiping at condensation gathering on his glass.

"He didn't try to convince me he's a different person now. It happened because he is. Different."

"Better, I assume?"

Harry nodded, took a gulp to wet his throat. He was afraid for something to come out hoarse, show his hand and reveal the emotions scrabbling to be freed from under the surface, visions swimming behind his eyes, memories pumping through his veins.

"Much. He's wonderful, honestly. I wouldn't jeopardize our friendships for nothing."

"We know," Hermione said into the quiet that followed. Ron nodded grimly, turning away to reduce the flames on the burners behind him down to a bare flicker.

"So, tell us then," he took a deep pull from his beer. "The whole thing. A primer."

"This way, once we all sit down for dinner soon, we can ask him for his version of events and give you a hard time for the parts you got wrong," Hermione said. Ron huffed a laugh, barely there but still, something, which brought a smile to her face too. 

"Welcome to the wonderful world of being in a relationship, Harry."

So, he took a deep breath and told them, starting with Gollybean and moving forward in time through all the main points—his nosiness into Draco's past, the hearing, and the Muggle degree. He hid the soft parts, kept them like smuggled jewels, close to his chest—coffee at the café, their chance meeting over ziti, late-night conversations that were more like lessons in political life and current events, now that Harry looked back on them. That it had been going on for months and started as a tenuous friendship took them both aback; that it had taken months to become clearly serious, something that had to be addressed to be able to continue, they begrudgingly accepted. 

Ron milled about cooking, going a deep burgundy colour on the occasion when Harry stumbled over his words to leave out a part that had, in reality, ended with some rather spectacular sex in a stairwell.

Hermione, gesturing with her lipstick-stained glass, interrupted, "Oh come on, Harry, you're leaving out anything even vaguely resembling a juicy bit! Is he good in bed or what?" and Harry had responded, "Well, I mean, most anything that started in a conversation ended in—well—fucking," and Hermione dropped her chin to her chest and said, conspiratorially, "But is it _good_ ," and Harry responded in kind, with, "Mione, it's—I mean—not to say too much, but it's _incredible_." Ron fully walked out of the room, leaving Hermione to laugh herself hoarse.

It felt good to say it aloud, to speak his relationship into existence, as though talking about the very thing he'd held onto in secret spoke it into reality. Every _we_ made concrete a memory, turned it into the cannon of his life. The chunk of rot lodged inside of Harry had been shaken loose, and he could feel it turning to smoke, to nothing, as he spoke openly about all the things he loved about Draco, even while he danced around the word, that awful, cursed word he couldn't dare say aloud again. Because he did, love him, loved what he did, who he was, his character, his smile, his smell—all of it.

It wasn't until they were sat to eat—properly for once, the regular debris of loose parchment and mittens and pre-packaged snacks that lived on the table relegated to the unused chair in a precipitous pile—that the chill of reality seeped back into Harry's bones. He stared at the mountain of food on the plate before him and knew that he couldn't eat, not if he tried.

"Something wrong?" Ron asked, piling rice and peas onto his own plate and levitating it over to Hermione. "Is it cold? I can heat it right back up." 

He eyed Harry warily while shovelling an enormous portion of steaming curry into his mouth. When he went to reach for his wand, Harry remembered himself and shook his head.

"No, I'm just, um," Harry struggled to lie, Draco's face coming to him, unbidden.

_"How could you?"_

He tapped the tines of his fork against the table, waiting for hunger to come for him, knowing it wouldn't. Draco wouldn't be able to eat tonight either; Harry knew that. He'd be pacing, now, or god forbid, he was having an attack. He'd need something for his nerves to calm down, wouldn't reach out for help come hell or high water—Harry should owl Pansy or Blaise. Should have before he'd come over to Ron and Hermione's—what if Draco was—

Harry blinked hard, switching the topic the way one switched a channel. He couldn't think about Draco right now. It was time to compartmentalize to make it through the meal.

_Selfish, that's what you are. You're so fucking selfish. He could be—_

He blinked harder this time. It wasn't working. Draco's face came to him, tongue to the roof of his mouth, the rolling 'l' of _"liar"_ on his lips, tears not yet fallen making his eyes sparkle, an exquisite pain yanking down every available muscle in his face. He'd looked so hurt, like Harry hadn't just wronged him once but had pulled back a curtain to reveal a forever of lies. Like Harry had proven him right, like he'd been waiting to be let down that way.

Hermione took her turn staring at him, finally putting her fork down and leaning across the table to squint at his face.

_"Don't you know that? You're all I've ever wanted."_

"Have you broken your lip today?" she asked. "It's swollen, I think. You're not allergic to anything, are you? Oh, Harry, if—"

"No, it's, um," Harry placed his napkin on the table and took his head in his hands, which had begun throbbing with an unknown pressure. "It's, uh. Something terrible's happened."

"Harry, what's happened?"

"I—um. I didn't know when to say. It's all very—it was Justin. He followed me, I think," Harry spoke slowly, remembering the afternoon in pieces as the altercation came back to him. His tongue was thick in his mouth and his head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The split of his broken lip was hot, impossibly hot. How hadn't he noticed all this pain?

"I was on an errand, Muggle part of town, and he was there. It can't have been random. He ran into me, literally, smashed me up. I think it was a set-up. He kissed me—"

" _Excuse me_?" gasped Hermione. She jerked, and cutlery clattered into the salad bowl in the centre of the table. 

"They must have gotten it on camera," Harry said, looking to Ron. His eyes made quick movements, wheels turning rapidly in his mind. Ron was the right man for this job. His long fingers were already scrabbling inside the pocket of his robes, coming up with a quick-quotes quill and a flip pad of cheap grid paper.

He set the quill to write his name and the date and, satisfied with its performance, looked to Harry.

"They?" Ron asked quietly. "Sounds like an assault to me." 

Harry shrugged, flinched at the memory.

"I guess, yeah, it was. It—he was threatening me."

"Oh my god, why didn't you say anything earlier? We should file a report," Hermione said. Something in the look Ron gave quietened her because there was silence again, a long silence for Harry to fill.

"What kind of threats?" There was the rustle of paper. Harry realized dimly that of course there would be notes, a report, everything. This wasn't for him to sort out on his own. More than a friend, Ron was an Auror, and that this made what he was doing right now his initial statement.

"Threats about who I was consorting with. He mentioned Robards, his father, and his cousin."

"Name?"

Harry searched his memory of the moment. Something stuffy, antiquated—

"Ithaca. Something to do with building permits."

"Why you can't just take fresh memories and work from those," Hermione muttered.

"You know they're unreliable, and we can only use them to exclude, not include evidence," Ron spoke in low tones. It was as though Harry had disappeared; this was a conversation they'd had before.

"Yes, but I'm just saying," she said, directing a rather powerful charm to send the open bottle of red wine into her waiting hand, splashing a healthy pour into her glass.

"Could we continue?" Ron asked. She waved a hand, and Ron gave Harry a nod.

"He was talking nonsense. About...things about me upsetting the natural way things, the established order. How things would be easier for me if we could have a go of it, as a couple." Harry cringed at the memory. "He's gone fucking mad, was speaking on behalf of people with more power than him, that the projects I was working on would go more smoothly if I didn't consort with the wrong kind. He knew—they know, about Draco. That we would go public."

"Was there anything else? Anyone you saw, something out of place that he said?"

"There was a crack—someone was there, and Apparated away. A photographer, I bet," Harry said, and Ron scratched something down. "Likely on staff or does spec work for WWN or The Prophet, considering they had it on-air within two hours. No one else I could see. I checked basic diagnostics and no Dark magic was at play, at least not the common kind. But there was something he said, it—"

It slammed into Harry all at once. He had to chuckle, though it was an empty one. Justin's strange little turn of phrase, an oddity among the rest of his speech, niggling at him like a loose tooth that Harry couldn't stop prodding at.

"He mentioned my 'home for lonely waifs', that's exactly what he said. Victoria says that; she's the only one who calls it that. And Tom, her assistant, he's the one who sent me there in the first place." Ron's eyes widened, a reflex he couldn't control. Harry took a few deep, stabilizing breaths as the full scope of what had happened came into focus for him.

"They're all in on it. Tom, Victoria—they're probably how reporters have known my schedule for months now. And Robards, I swear, he's been coming at me from all angles about a get-back-to-work plan." The room's lights flowed brighter, brighter still, and sparks lit a fresh fire in the previously cold grate in the corner.

"Harry," Hermione whispered.

The tide was coming higher inside Harry, his magic looking for an out. It would overflow, soon, the way he felt.

"They all knew, for months," he ground his teeth, banging a fist on the table. "They fucking knew, they just didn't care as long as it was—"

"Kept hush," Ron supplied. Harry swallowed thickly. Sweat beaded at his temples as the temperature in the room soared.

"Yeah," he said. He touched his throbbing lip, licked the swollen nub. It was split inside where a tooth had been caught between it and Justin's jaw. He swallowed a fresh trickle of blood. "Fuck."

"Fuck, indeed," Ron said. "I'll file this report, and at the very least, we can make sure that little-fucking-Finch-Fletchley can't get within a hundred yards of you again. As for the other stuff, it sounds like a conspiracy, mate."

"It'll be hard to prove," Hermione added. Harry's mind went dark as he made a sound, non-committal, the rage that had been building ebbing away. He'd been backstabbed or over-coddled; it amounted to the same thing at the end of the day. This wasn't a battle that ended with fists or wands raised but in the dreary stuffiness of conference rooms and the brutal court of public opinion. There would be talk, gossip, and inches and inches of newsprint devoted to real jealousies and imagined proclivities, and so much endless shite he didn't care about. He bowed his head and pushed the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes. He was tired, exhausted totally by the ups and downs of his day.

"It will be nearly impossible to prove any of it," he said, "but as far as I'm concerned, I only have to prove it to one person."

"Who?" Ron and Hermione asked simultaneously, and Harry gave an abrupt laugh, and it kept coming. The awkward rhythm of it reset his solar plexus, took over his breathing. But the character of it was off, and soon the sound came out broken, transforming into a choked-off sob.

"Draco," he said, throat tight at the remembered anguish of the scene. "He, um—right before I came here, I saw him, and before I could explain—it's all over the news." Harry gestured broadly, finding it impossible to encompass what had transpired, how hopeless and futile trying to rectify the damage caused seemed.

He pulled off his glasses and folded the tines, placing them next to his fork and knife, then rested his elbows on the table and let his face fall forwards to rest his head in his hands. He barely heard the clatter of chair-legs against the floor as the smell of coconuts and ink-thinner grew thick beside him, Hermione's arm slung over his shoulders. His breaths heaved as tears he hadn't been sure would be able to form wet his lashes into daubs of black and spilled, fat droplets staining the thighs of his jeans.

"Shit, I didn't realize this was...serious," Ron said from his seat.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said, rubbing broad circles into his back, "It's going to be okay."

Harry nodded into his lap, unable to force any more words out. The tears ran out quickly—he was too sad to give a fuck, it seemed as he sat back in his chair and pulled his knees up, folding in on himself. He wanted to be made small, made infinitesimal. To disappear for a bit, dissolve into particles that couldn't feel, worry, or be harmed.

Eventually, the storm passed, and Hermione was left to try old-witches cures for hiccups on him.

"Drink from the back of the glass. No, the _back_ —here, let me show you," she said, a smile tugging one of her cheeks up. He tried and failed, and she'd alter one thing—"Wait, from the side. Drink from the _right side_ ,"—until his breaths came steadily, a hand permanently rubbing a shoulder when it wasn't tipping the tumbler of water up a centimetre.

Ron cleared the table and firecalled work, gently explaining to Harry what he already knew; that he'd have to go in and make an official report in the morning; that he should avoid all contact with Victoria and Tom until the details were cleared. Harry bit the inside of his lip, nodding, practicing his breathing. In, out. In, out.

"The truth will out, mate," Ron added. 

"I'm sorry," Harry croaked at long last. They had all decamped to the living room, Hermione and Harry taking up acres of real estate on the worn, too-squishy couch, Ron nursing a whisky four-fingers deep from his favourite orange chintz chair. 

"I didn't mean to fall apart—"

"Where we could see you do it?" Hermione supplied. Harry bit his cheek.

"Astute," he said, "though it's times like these that I really, really hate therapy."

"Better out than in," Ron said, a wan smile on his face when Harry answered only with another hiccup.

"So," Hermione summoned a quill and bit of parchment from the side-table next to her and pulled an ancient tome from under the couch to perch it on. "What's the plan?"

"What plan?" Harry sniffled, sitting up on the couch. Ron's baby blanket dug into his back, so he pulled it out and spread it over his lap, curling under it. It smelled faintly of green grass and spilt milk, but Harry didn't mind it. _Teddy_ , he thought, grieving for the fact that this new afront meant that he'd have to cancel their playdate the next day. He had to choke back fresh tears at the thought— _get it together, you bloody sop._

"How you get him back, obviously," she said, flicking a glance to Ron. His reply took the form of a healthy swig of his drink.

"Yes, alright, alright, I'm in. If Draco-bloody-Malfoy is the thing Harry needs to be happy—"

"He's not a _thing_ , Ronald—"

"Merlin, help me, alright! If he's the _person_ Harry needs, then, fuck it." He motioned with the glass, whisky sloshing dangerously up its sides. "I'll help however I can." 

Harry noticed Hermione eyeing the precipitous tumbler of liquid in Ron's hands, mouthed pinched as she watched the display. She was forever worried about the carpet, the horrendous, itchy, pre-stained stuff that the landlord refused to let them rip out and replace.

 _Hardwood_ , Harry thought. He'd add that as a caveat—he couldn't stand the thought of watching the two of them bicker over who stained which inch of carpet for decades to come. And there were the future children to think of, too.

"You two." He pulled the blanket tightly around his shoulders, their attention refocusing on him again. "You don't—it's fine, I'll figure—"

"Harry James Potter, if you don't let us help you, we'll go ahead and do it on our own. And I should think that you wouldn't want the future of your relationship to be totally decided by the inferences of your friends, so just lie down and let us help you, alright?"

Harry nodded begrudgingly. Hermione looked positively chuffed as she scratched at the parchment, seemingly satisfied with the flow of ink from the quill as she began to write.

"Great. So. Get talking," she looked at him expectantly. Harry let a huge breath fill his cheeks and blew it out.

"Okay," he said, realizing the gargantuan task before him of convincing the prickliest, most sensitive person he'd ever met to forgive him, believe him, and take him back. "Where do I begin?"

* * *

**Sunday, December 14, 2003**

"You know I could have you done up on stalking charges."

Harry didn't move from his spot, remained leaning over the edge of the car park. He craned his head up, marvelling at the rare sky of clear blue spread above them. It was bitterly cold out, but he was fresh off an hour's run, muscles warm and sweat still running from his pores, a warming charm enveloping him as though it were a mild spring day.

"How's that?"

Ron took up a spot an arms-length away from him, hands smashed deeply into the pockets of a long navy overcoat. He was on-duty, unusual for a Sunday, and when Harry glanced at him, the grim set of his stubbled jaw signalled that he was none too happy about it.

"Don't play coy with me, Harry," Ron said simply. 

The silence that followed held the space for Harry to apologize. He didn't.

"What's brought you to me on this bright, shiny day?" Harry turned his back to empty space beyond the building, resting his weight in his bent forearms, casual as he could pretend to be. He raised an eyebrow at Ron, who refused to look directly at him. Instead, he unwrapped something from a bit of wax paper and popped it into his mouth.

"Candy?" Harry asked, cocking his head. 

"Lozenge," he said around it.

"You're ill? I'm sorry—"

"Stop taking the piss. Why the fuck are you here?" Harry shrugged and rolled his neck until it cracked loudly.

"I'm serious." Ron was looking directly at him now, doing a poor job of containing his anger. "Answer the goddamn question."

The runner's high was wearing off. Soon he'd crash, and that was the point. He'd wanted to be alone for a few sweet minutes before heading home to the heat of a shower and then a long, uninterrupted sleep.

"You know why I'm here. Why _you're_ here is the real question."

"I'm here because I've got news for you. News you'd already know if you'd make yourself available in any normal way."

Harry closed his eyes, basking in the feel of the sun on his skin, such a rare thing this time of year. The week previous had matched his mood—never-ending grey, a drizzle that wouldn't quit. Kreacher had caught cold, and Harry had never known the elf to be sick a day in his life. And now, this—freezing and cloudless, and all he'd wanted to do was to enjoy a sliver of it alone, but he couldn't, and he was going to be damned if anyone interrupted him at it.

"I told Harris that if anything came up to send an owl and I would come in to the Ministry. I'm still accepting Ministry owls. What couldn't wait—"

"It's something that couldn't be sent by owl, you twat. You know that's why I'm on the case at all, don't you?" Ron sucked at the lozenge, stepping closer and finally resting on the steel pole barrier that separated them from a three-story drop. He leaned over, observing the pedestrians strolling along, blissfully unaware of the very top-secret-business taking place high above their heads. "It's not like a newly minted constable would normally be given liaison on your case. You know that there's stuff that can't be put in writing—"

"I know, and I don't want to be part of it. I don't," Harry snapped at Ron, staring him down. He inhaled, the air filling his lungs, hurting them, freezing the delicate little vessels. For a moment before Ron had arrived, he'd almost felt happy, but now he was reminded of his life, and he welcomed feeling ugly and mean again, just as cruel as he could be. "I can't figure out another way to say, _I'm not available for your little fucking games—"_

"Justin's accepted the plea deal. The restraining order is in place indefinitely."

Harry scoffed. That was a given; hardly news at all. Irritation flared up, sure as anything, like acid reflux crawling up his throat. He swallowed it, a snarky "Bully for him" rolling off his tongue. When he cricked his neck again, he got an even more satisfying crack than the first time.

Ron was nonplussed by his attitude and did a middling job hiding it, a gruff sound emitting from his throat.

"McGonnagal hasn't signalled if she'll be firing him from his post, as yet. She's handling that on her own, so if you have any questions about it, you'll have to go to her directly."

Harry continued staring at Ron, really letting the weight of his displeasure be made plain. He had a mulish look, something dark and angry stewing within him too. It would come up, and they'd hash it out soon enough, Harry was sure. He was dickish, and Ron had a short fuse. They both did, really. How'd they'd managed friendship so long was kind of a miracle.

"Great. Lovely. Smashing. Anything else?"

Ron dragged his tongue between his bottom lip and teeth like he always did when considering something.

"I came to let you know that your agent, the Cresswell woman? She had nothing to do with any of this."

Harry could laugh, but it didn't quite make it out of his throat. He huffed, breath like a puff of smoke.

"Why couldn't that be put in a fucking letter? What's with all the secrecy-this and secrecy-that?"

"Her assistant though, the Tom fellow? He's the nutter that set this all off."

The laugh came this time, rising up like a bark, his shoulders rising and falling with the sound.

"Tom?" he said incredulously. "Fucking Tom?"

Ron nodded, crunching the tablet between his molars and grinding the shards down. "That's not all of it."

Harry could tell by the look Ron gave him then that he wouldn't like what _all of it_ entailed. But he'd always known that—had known in his gut that the bad was coming. The decay was finally being revealed; all the people he'd trusted would gradually wipe off the stage make-up and return the masks to their closets, and Harry would be left with a crowd of imposters and people who wished him and those he loved harm. It was the way of things, after all.

"It goes without saying that none of this is on any sort of official record." Harry raised his brows impatiently; Ron sighed and flipped up the collar of his coat. It cost him something to be used like this, Harry knew, and it wasn't fair for Harry to treat him poorly while he did what he had to do. He didn't envy him the position of "Harry Potter's Best Friend" within the Aurors one bit. It wasn't right to have him whisper secrets in Harry's direction, but they were too old and had been through too much for _right_ to mean much of anything anymore.

"Your man Tom had a bit of a thing for you."

"Huh," Harry said. This was a revelation that hadn't occurred to him as a possibility. "No shit." 

Ron cocked his head. 

"Yeah, well. Mania, more like it. He wanted you protected from the rubbish of the world—his words. Now, it seems like he would be asked to ferry information about your whereabouts to his contact in the press on occasion. A Jenny Wolcott."

Harry scrunched his face up and scratched at the patch of dry skin on his chin. It wasn't stubbled anymore—he had a proper beard coming in, thick as wool. He'd soon be out-doing Ron, who had been trying for the same for ages.

"The columnist at the Prophet? Doesn't she do, like—"

"Food and Elixers, mostly. She moonlights for the entertainment section every so often. Tom was doing this on the behest of Victoria, who swears up, down and sideways that she always had your blessing to do so."

Harry sniffed. "She did." Ron gave a thoughtful nod, staring down again at the little people moving about below. A group of boys had set up a speaker, the fast cadence of some new rap song spewing out into the street. The smallest in the group was teaching the other two steps to a dance, arms akimbo, light as air on his feet.

"Tom made a request to her about Malfoy back in the summer, and she assumed it had something to do with you. Then he tells her to keep mum about it, and clever woman that she is, she filed that away for later. Now comes the part you're not going to like." Ron took a deep breath. He didn't shy away from saying it; he'd delivered worse news than this before. "At some point, someone within the Ministry took an interest in tracking where you were as well. More often than these tidbits were being passed to the press."

Ron had the decency to look sombre as Harry rolled off the barrier, stepping away onto the pocked pavement. He followed the peeling white paint outlining the edge of one parking space from the next.

"Robards. Say it, say Robards."

"Someone within the Ministry took an interest. Someone with enough clearance that they could put through requests as security checks."

Harry blew out air, the puff rising soft as candy floss, a breath of pure white in the air. It was always like this—spectacularly cold and bone-dry on sunny blue-sky days, warm-ish but wet under your collar when the sky blurred under the blanket of clouds. He preferred the cold—everything was easier with a spot of sunlight. And now Ron had come, and he'd ruined it.

"Security checks? Are you listening to yourself? What—it's a matter of national security where I am on a Friday night?"

Ron sighed. "You know I can't say shite like you can, Harry. What I can say is that someone—"

"Your boss! My bloody ex-boss is the bloody someone, and he had no right! No fucking right—"

"Harry, I'm on your side," Ron hissed warningly.

Harry grit his teeth, flicking his fingers and curling them into fists.

"Yeah, sure, whatever, I get it. Just the messenger, and all," he spat uncharitably. "He had the Ministry of Transport do it, right?"

Ron gave a nod and chewed his lip, mulling something over while the blood in Harry's body steadily grew hotter, thicker. He would run home, push, push, push until his knee twinged and gave out. He's scream in the shower until it shredded his throat, would take so much Dreamless Sleep that he'd wake sometime next week. He wanted so badly to have someone to strangle at that moment.

"I took a look at who signed off on the requests. They started after you quit, and it was Chief Superintendent Moran who did it, but yeah. You can read into that what you will."

Harry scoffed. _Moran—spineless, paper-pusher, career politician shunted into a role that had a scrumptious pay packet and no teeth. Moran—hadn't walked a beat or dirtied his hands in thirty-odd years. Moran—Robards' left hand._

"What's this Ministry of Transport shite got to do with Tom? Or Justin."

Ron coughed into his closed fist. It sounded wet and nasty, and Harry should ask him how he was doing, but it was like the sensitive, feeling parts inside him had shrivelled up to something too small to care. He waited in the painful sound until it stopped, and Ron could continue to speak, eyes watering dangerously. 

"Seems like Ms. Wolcott at the Prophet is better at her job than her years in the business would suggest, because, on top of knowing where you were officially, she got to know where you were _unofficially_ , on occasion, because she learned about these clandestine little requests for your location going through within the Ministry. That's her source though, as far as she's concerned, and she's not talking, so—" Ron shrugged, "—we'll see where that goes. So she goes putting things together—your attendance at certain events, and she starts chatting up Tom, and he's nuts at the concept of you seeing _anyone,_ and lets on that you're making a lot of calls and SMS messages to a single unknown number in Chelsea, that he hopes she can figure out who that person is—and at some point, she brought the possibility of a story about you and Malfoy to Barney—"

"And Cuffe quashed it," Harry growled. He walked a tight circle, fingers intertwined behind, elbows bent outwards. "And he brought it to Robards because that's what they do."

"You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Yeah. I'm really sorry, mate," Ron said, and it sounded genuine. Harry closed his eyes again, and this time, before he'd opened them, Ron's lanky, broad body was enveloping him in a hug.

"Er—" Harry's eyes shot open into a mane of orange obstructing his view of the sky. Ron had gone in for the hug with gusto and held fast, even as Harry struggled out from it.

"Don't," he said, voice impossibly small, "please, just don't—"

"Just fucking accept it, you absolute wanker. This sucks. And I'm sorry, but I didn't do it, okay, so how about you hold the pissiness for the people who deserve it?"

Harry swallowed and brought his arms down and around Ron's form to pat at his back. He turned and stared at the stairwell to their level, praying for some teenagers to suddenly appear and do something loud and teenage-like, forcing the hug to end. But they didn't, and it didn't, not for long seconds where, to Harry's chagrin, he started to like it. Ron gave great hugs and always knew exactly when to end them. Which he did, gripping Harry by a shoulder and giving it a bracing squeeze.

"Thanks," Harry said begrudgingly. Ron smirked.

"You're welcome, you curmudgeonly old sod. So, yeah, that's the long and short of it. You've got all your players who knew about you and Malfoy—"

"Draco," Harry blurted the name, so used to correcting himself. Ron pursed his lips, ready to retort, and then his face relaxed.

"Alright, yeah. They knew about Draco. Well, know about him—it's not like he's dead. The whole Justin going above and beyond to try to blackmail you into dating him—he's on his own on that one. I suppose there could be some angle between his dad and Robards, but he, er, caught you two in the loo." That Ron managed to say all this without blushing was a sign of maturity, or possibly his sickness had robbed him of his characteristic ability to flush like a red light. "A loo, he wouldn't specify." 

Harry's eyes flicked shut, the memory of that fateful first moment in Persephone coming back to him in an instant. The sound of the door closing as someone left; Harry too high off the drug that was Draco in his hands to care.

"Care to share which loo?" Ron asked. Harry smashed his lips together as he shook his head. Six months before, he'd die from mortification, but just that moment, he wanted nothing more than to go back in time and pull Draco back into that stall for a kiss, for another few, stolen moments. To leave the pub together and deal with the grouching of friends and the swarm of the press instead of the furtive sneaking around Harry had forced him into. 

He pulled his wand from his joggers' pocket and cast a fresh warming charm over himself and Ron. No sense in running again if his muscles went cold—they'd snap in this weather, and if he couldn't run at all, he'd go properly mad. 

_"I need my runs—"_

He could so easily picture Draco saying it, and the memory brought the first genuine smile to his lips all day.

"Or maybe an uncle," Harry mumbled. Ron raised an eyebrow at him, and he realized he was thinking too much and saying too little. "He mentioned his dad and Robards were the same year, but he's also chummy with his uncle. They're all connected, there's hardly any point in figuring out who said what."

Ron hummed, rubbing his hands together and blowing into cupped palms.

"This is good, though, right? I mean, you can bring this to Malf—" he stopped to huff, "to _Draco_ , and he'll take you back."

Harry took up his earlier position again, looking out over the chasm to the tan brick building opposite them. The shrill voices of children with too much energy and too little to do sounded from the high windows, all of them open but revealing nothing, set at the very top of the wall.

"I don't think it's going to be so easy."

Ron huffed. He wasn't one to allow Harry to wallow, not even when it was warranted. 

"You could at least open your Floo again. Come over tonight, Hermione's worried sick."

"I'm not good company," Harry said simply. "You don't want me around right now, Ron. I can promise you that."

His endorphins were evaporating into nothingness, eyelids beginning to droop. He fidgeted, rubbing fingertips tightly against thumbs, wishing for Ron to leave, to disappear just as soon as he'd appeared. He'd be having no such luck, it was becoming obvious, Ron winding up for a fight. His brow lowered over his eyes when he was angry, and the way he looked at Harry just then, Harry knew him to be livid.

"What we don't want is you dropping in, having a fucking breakdown and then not returning our calls or texts or owls, shutting off every available way to reach you for _days_. That's what we don't want."

"I'm sorry—"

"You can cut the bloody _sorry's_ , Harry. I'm not interested in them anymore." Ron bit his lip, weighing his next words. "It's not fair to us, you know. You doing this. We know what you do when you lock yourself away."

"No," Harry pushed the word out, a growl. "You don't."

"You get wasted. Big woop! Who cares?" Ron's breathing was accelerating, the frown turning to a sneer. He pressed a thumb deep into the opposite palm, focusing on that when he couldn't look Harry in the eye to deliver his next words, the ones he'd been working up to. "I can see Hermione going spare, worrying over you and pretending she's not, and it reminds me of that first year after the war—"

"Don't," Harry threatened sharply. Ron shook his head and continued to speak over him.

"That first year after the war, when you treated our flat like it was A&E. This is just like that, and it's not fair to us, Harry. We don't exist to help you over the hump, and then poof!—you disappear again. You owe us more than that."

"I'm not good company," Harry repeated. 

"And if you go and do this with him, if this is how it's been between the two of you all these months, that's not fair to him either. You can't let people in deep and then push them away the first time shite gets hard, Harry. You'll push him away too if you're not careful."

"Stop it." The cold air in his lungs hurt, now, as though ice crystals abraded the soft flesh in his throat and coated his insides. It hurt to hear of how he hurt people. "Don't you think I know what I do? I can't be around you when things get bad because—"

_Because what, exactly? You don't trust yourself to keep from hurting them permanently? Because you're violent and broken? He won't listen to you—nobody ever listens to you about this. They don't understand because they can't see the thing you are under the veneer. You've got to let the rot out to show them._

"You're fine company, Harry. We've known you all your life, why can't you trust us—"

"I moved the fucking building, Ron." Harry wrapped his arms around himself and dropped down to a crouch as a flock of pigeons swooped in and settled not ten feet from where they stood, as though conjured. Harry studied them for a moment, noticing a single white and gold pigeon among them. A dove in the middle of the chaos of the city.

"Six inches, I moved it. The whole thing, just—" Harry mimed pushing something, gave a miffed sound. "That's what happened when Justin told me that he knew about Draco, and something inside me just—I don't know, burst. I didn't want it to hurt him, so that feeling went somewhere else, and I moved an entire fucking building, Ron. I could have killed people."

"But you didn't," Ron said, and he looked at Harry with pity, and that was the only thing Harry couldn't stand.

_Why pity me when I'm the one that's done wrong too? How much do I have to do to convince him that he should stay away, that it would be better for him?_

"That's not the point. I should be in Azkaban, or under watch, or, or something. I've tried telling you over and over again that I'm not well, and you refuse to _listen_ to me."

Ron kept staring at him like he was a pitiable lunatic, and it was riling Harry to the point that he thought he might do something he might regret about it, and if it weren't for his need that required itching, the scratch that had brought him to this car park in the first place, he'd have Apparated away. As it was, Ron's look shifted to something manageable. Like Harry wasn't pitiable—maybe just dumb.

"It was a mistake, mate. We all make mistakes."

"But—"

"Ah, ah, ah," Ron raised a hand and shook his head. "You didn't grow up with magic, and your outbursts were treated like the end of the world. And yes, moving a building six inches, that's not nothing. No one is going to pretend that it wasn't a pretty big deal. But Harry—shite like this happens all the time—albeit, yes, most people aren't as powerful as you, so on a smaller scale—and no one talks about it because there's nothing much to talk about."

"Why can't you admit that I could have killed people? The entire building could have collapsed—there were kids on that street—" Harry's throat closed up, and he looked away, couldn't stand Ron's eyes another second. 

"Your magic isn't malignant, Harry. It's not Dark."

The words slid off his skin like a compliment he knew better than to accept. It would be foolish for him to think that there wasn't something wrong with him. He turned his face, stared at the white pigeon, bobbing along with its brethren. He wondered if it knew it was different in any tangible way. If there was any way at all for it to know.

"You know that, right? The fact that you intentionally kept from hurting Justin and directed that feeling elsewhere—that's good. That's real goodness, that choice, and nobody got hurt because you didn't want anyone to get hurt. You see?"

Harry swallowed against knives. It was Ron who couldn't see, it was everyone else always pulling the wool over their eyes and thinking kind thoughts about him, and someday, they'd all be shown the real him, and it would be a terribly sad day. He felt more than ever like he was a leper, but the only one in history who had the burden of constantly trying to convince others of his spots, though he was sure the lesions should be visible, should make him hateable.

"Now, are you going to tell me why you're up here exactly, or not?" Ron asked. Harry blinked and breathed, rocking back and forth until he could trust his throat to carry words up and out again without them cracking.

"He dances here. I've never visited."

A glance at Ron saw him nod slowly.

"I knew that. But what I didn't know was why you'd be over here, in the car park. Wouldn't it be easier to catch him if you were Disillusioned down on the street, like a regular stalker?"

"I'm not a stalk—" Harry started to defend himself and, then he stopped. He grinned, almost—it wasn't a grimace, at least. More than one person in his life knew how to get under his skin.

"Look," he said instead, facing the brick building and waving a hand in a long, sweeping motion. The windows looked to be dripping ever lower, blobs of what had been brick replaced with elongating panes of glass. This dripping continued until the wall was entirely see-through from their vantage point, though the people assembled in the room hadn't noticed. One patron, in particular, a boy who looked about ten, certainly hadn't, as he picked a wedgie from his bum with great force, hidden at the back of a huddle of other students.

"It's been less than a week, you know. Early days," Ron said, apropos nothing. Harry grunted, studying the heads of the amassed students, wishing the buildings were closer together. The pigeons behind them cooed and then took off all at once, startling Ron. Harry was busy, couldn't be bothered to watch them fly away.

"Have you tried Hermione's tack?"

"He hasn't been sending back my letters," Harry said quietly. "I've written to him every day. Every day." 

His eyes skipped from head to head—this one too darkly haired, that one blonde, but in ponytails. "His Floo is shut, and his mobile line is dead. He probably changed the number."

"Letters are the way to go," Ron said. "With a mobile, if he doesn't answer, he doesn't have to listen. But he's far too curious to burn a letter. Don't worry, mate—Hermione's right on that front—he won't be able to help but read them."

"I worry," Harry said. Ron took up the post to his right again and also studied the heads in the room. Harry began to feel antsy.

 _This is taking too long_. _What if he's ill, what if something's happened, what if—_

"You haven't spotted him yet, have you?" Ron asked gently. Harry shook his head tightly. Ron pointed, a long, freckled finger extending to the far right side of Harry's vision. "Back corner, with the girls. In the white."

For a moment, he was ready to shove Ron and tell him to fuck off and stop joking, but even at a distance, Harry recognized Draco's fluid movements; the way he swung his arms while demonstrating, how they appeared so loose and yet so controlled, elegant, perfect lines. Harry fumbled in his joggers' left pocket and came up with a cigarette, which he lit with barely a thought and took a pull on.

"Since when did you start smoking?" Ron asked. Harry took another pull and expelled it.

"I don't."

Ron heaved a breath. "Why are you still being like this?" he asked. He coughed again, not so bad as the first time, and popped another lozenge in his mouth. Harry could smell it up close—sweet honey and lemon, the spice of ginger. "I just don't get it. I don't get you, sometimes."

Harry took another pull, deeply, until the tickle in his throat threatened to turn into a mortifying cough. He couldn't tear his eyes away from Draco's form. It was him, alright, though he'd altered his hair in a way that Harry found very distressing and very, very hot at the same time.

He'd shorn it— _of course he's gone and cut it if only for the drama_ , he thought uncharitably. It was dyed an alarming shade of pink too, alarming because it was so brazenly not the suit-and-tie Draco he had come to see day in and day out for months. Yet it worked on him—a little grunge, a little fey. It would look so good with his pearl earrings. Arousal stirred in him—imagining Draco, biting his lip, in nothing but tartan trousers and an outsize blazer, Doc Martens and jewelry, and that hair— _fuck._ Harry bit his lip to contain a smile, afraid that if he wasn't careful, he'd make a strange and happy noise. The twin urges of anger at the loss of so much of his favourite thing and the incredible urge to be able to run his hands over it, memorize the feel it freshly cut sprung up in him, and he so wanted to be alone just then. Just him and Draco, even if they were a hundred yards apart, separated by air hot and cold, steel and brick, and the gulf of Draco's hurt.

"Sometimes," he said, very slowly, "if I think of what we have together, he and I, and the fact that it might be over for us because of all this shit, the feeling gets so big that I think I might break."

He swallowed hard, took another pull, nodding to himself. When he turned to look, Ron had carefully schooled his features.

"What?" Harry asked. "They've trained you too well. I can't read you."

Ron scratched his forehead, peering across the street. He very calmly clasped his hands together over the barrier, taking his time.

"I thought you said he took dance classes?"

Harry shrugged. "I thought he did. He might, other days. But today, he teaches."

"And that doesn't feel like a lie to you?"

Harry shook the insinuation off, smiling as he blew smoke out one side of his lips.

"Of course not. He didn't really say. I assumed. It's my mistake." Draco had taught the girls in the corner some spinning move with their feet whipping in, propelling them in endless spirals. He'd moved on to work with a group of younger students, mixed boys and girls, taking them through a simple routine. Harry tapped out the beat on the steel, eyes only for Draco. It made his heart hurt to see him, but he couldn't tear his eyes away.

"I saw him with his ex, you know."

Harry stopped his tapping.

"Excuse me?"

"We went to Persephone on Friday, and Luna recognized the bloke he was with."

"He was at the bar?"

Ron nodded. He was studying Harry's face, he knew. "Yep. For what it's worth, it didn't seem like a date. They left early—"

"Was he drinking?" Harry took one last pull of the cigarette and tossed it to the ground, extinguishing it with a twist of his toe. He sniffed, certain that this wasn't enough to set him off crying again—he'd decided on no more crying, it was too exhausting when he could sleep instead—stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked back. Draco stood at the side of the room as the class ran through the routine, one arm supporting his lower back, his other aloft, marking the time, comments slipping from his mouth.

"I um. Yeah. I think. But nothing absurd."

"Why are you telling me this?" Harry couldn't help the tremor of uncertainty that wormed itself into his voice.

"I say this because I love you like a brother. And I know you," Ron gripped him by the shoulder, trying to make him look away from Draco and at him, "you love him. Whatever. It's just that there's a chance that Malfoy—"

"Draco," Harry whispered sharply.

"There's a strong chance in my opinion that _Draco_ will always have a lot more in common with his rich, asshole dick of an ex than with you. That's all."

"Oh, that's all?" Harry asked, eyebrows raised. He would have to face Ron to get properly angry with him, which angered him even more. "Really great pep talk, _friend_ , so glad you could join me. I've just lost my boyfriend—"

And he looked to Ron just as he grimaced like the word was an aberration, and Harry lost it. Felt his stomach drop and his heart stutter.

"You know what? I can't believe you sometimes. All this shit about what a crap friend I am, and you can't stand to hear me call him my boyfriend. You can go fuck yourself." Harry pushed Ron in the chest, sending him reeling, not quite falling to the pavement. Ron breathed heavily, nostrils flaring.

"Get out of here," Harry said. Tears welled in his eyes, but he'd fight Ron with his fists before he let him see them drop over this. Ron settled back into his previous position, standing his ground.

"Listen," Ron said, a note of pleading bleeding into his voice. "Let's get one thing crystal clear," he started.

"Go!" Harry yelled, and when he approached Ron again, he pushed him as hard as he could, and Ron was taller, but Harry had strength, and he lost his footing, palms scraped raw as he fell to the salted ground.

"Harry! Let me talk for one second," Ron pulled his wand as he lurched up to stand, and Harry smiled a smile that he knew must be ruthless, and he thought about going for his own—

And then he stopped. He looked out over the space and saw Draco, laughing, his face alight at the comment made by some child, and he stopped. He didn't want to fight with Ron. He was running on fumes. Aching, tired, hungry, and so hurt, he thought that he might crumble into a depression not worth fighting his way out of. Ron lowered his wand and pocketed it, holding one hand aloft, as though Harry might rush him again any moment.

"Listen," he repeated himself, "I'm not working on accepting you being gay because I don't care, Harry. Honest, it doesn't bother me a bit. It's just work getting used to the words. My heart's in the right place, but you've got to understand—no, don't walk away—" He snapped out with a quick hand to grab a retreating Harry, loosening his grip as soon as Harry flashed an angry snarl at him.

"Please stop, Ron. I'm so tired, and I can't. Not with you right now," Harry pled, but Ron wouldn't let him escape and held him tight by both shoulders.

"Harry, hear me out. Ginny and I growing up, being the youngest, we saw all the things our older brothers did, and half the time, we didn't understand what they were up to, but sometimes we did. Charlie's had boyfriends and girlfriends—all fucking sorts. And he never trusted Bill or Percy or Fred or George with that, but we were younger, and we couldn't have been made to care, so he trusted us with that. It's just how it is for him, and I've never thought twice about it, about how that might make him any different than the rest of us. Or any lesser. Honest."

Harry swallowed the lump in his throat as Ron loosened his grip and let him retreat away from a few short steps, aware of his aversion to most touch. He chewed nervously at a thumbnail; it was already close to the quick, but he couldn't help it. _Better this than drowning in bitters at the pub,_ he thought. He couldn't conjure Draco's voice to keep him from indulging in his bad habits, lately, because it hurt too much.

Ron took a few deep breaths. "Yeah. He's the reason that I grew up thinking that Ginny might be gay—I used to practice what'd I'd say to her if she told me. That it would be fine. I've always—it doesn't matter, to me. You've got to know that." Harry looked him in his eyes, and he knew it to be true, even though it didn't lessen the sharp pain he'd known at Ron's grimace. 

"Then why do you make that fucking face when I talk about him?"

Ron pushed his hair back, pulling the skin on his face taut. He was worried, Harry realized, really, truly worried that this would be a break between them. 

"We've never told Mum and Dad, Ginny and I, because Charlie's never wanted us to. He's not ready yet, and maybe he never will be. Jesus, I don't know," he let his hair go, gave Harry a rueful look. "We grew up with all these words we didn't say, and it's weird, trying to reconcile the reactions we were taught to have with how I actually feel about things. And even Mum and Dad—fuck. It's—I can see they're trying. And it's not enough, you shouldn't be made to feel awkward, but sometimes the way it is is just shitty."

"It is shitty," Harry breathed, and the look Ron gave him then, he was sure that his friend would be the one to leave the conversation in tears.

"I'm so sorry, mate. I don't want you to feel—I'm sorry," he said, pushing his thumbs into his palms over and over again. 

Harry wanted to say that no, it wasn't _just the way it is_. It was simple, it was easy; it was him and their friendship, or it was bigotry and bullshit. But he could see, too, what Ron was saying. That he meant it—he'd never treated Harry differently, hadn't gone funny around him, never cracked a lewd joke about Harry taking his showers first in the change rooms, or insinuated that because he was interested in men that he must therefore be interested in him, or any of their friends or fellow recruits. He'd been steadfast, though his vocabulary was limited and his understanding of things antiquated—he was trying. It was clear that Ron was always, always trying to be his best for Harry.

_You can't say the same for yourself now, can you?_

"Alright," Harry said. He knocked their shoulders together and stared at his trainers. "I'd hug you, but I'm drained, and I'm afraid I'll do it wrong."

Ron snorted. "You're so weird."

They stared back across the chasm for another few minutes until Draco disappeared from view, off to the front of the class to lead the kids in their stretching.

Harry let the spell dissipate, the windows reverting back to their small rectangular shapes set high, unattainable to the children's little hands below them.

"Charlie said he's available, by the way. If you, you know. Need a chat."

Harry was quiet, not sure what to say to that. He nodded, hoped it was enough.

"You still going to therapy?" Ron asked. Harry nodded.

"Good," Ron said. "You're coming round for dinner tonight. It's at seven."

"I know," Harry said. He gave a weak smile and a wave as the signal that he too was going to leave, now that he'd had his fill. "It's always at seven."

"Bring flowers," Ron said, giving Harry an arch look. Harry nodded.

"Roses," he said. He waited until Ron had Disapparated before he dared look over the edge of the car park. He sucked in a surprised breath and fell away, inching back to peer again, carefully, this time. It was to see a little spot of pink down below, a pale face looking up, wondering what had caused the familiar cracking sound in the cold winter air.

* * *

**Wednesday, December 17, 2003**

"There isn't any way I can talk you out of this?"

Harry studied the perfectly smooth plaster ceiling of Victoria Cresswell's office, in awe at the lack of cracks. She'd had the place redecorated in a mad dash, as though a fresh coat of paint and a new theme could wash away the stain that her assistant Tom—Harry couldn't recall his last name, wasn't sure that he'd ever learned it, or if anger made him forgetful—from the place.

He considered her question as he lit a fresh cigarette. It was a marvel, really, that the plaster was so smooth in a building as old as the one they were in. The sage green colour painted over it had a truly calming effect, provided an elegant background to the clear plexiglass and beechwood furniture placed throughout the space.

"No, Vic. I've made my decision, and I won't be moved." The white leather of the chaise on which he lounged was buttery soft, the arms so thickly cushioned that he didn't even need a pillow to rest his neck comfortably on one of them. He turned to face his press relations agent and found her mirroring his position on the couch opposite—head leaned back, a gold-tipped cigarette of pink paper clutched between her fingers, feet up with one high heel still dangling from her stockinged toes.

Harry concentrated until the paper at the tip of her cigarette began to curl and blacken, lighting it with a thought. She smiled at it, then at him, a ring of dark pink lip liner outlining lips that had long ago lost their gloss.

"Fine. I needed to hear it from you before I stopped trying, is all. Due diligence," she said with a flick of her wrist.

She took a drag; he stared at the ceiling again. They'd earned the break, had been holed up inside for a sunrise and a sunset, and were due to watch another sunrise through her narrow office windows any minute. Harry's eyes were dry—he summoned his designated glass of water from where he'd left it on her desk, a bright white monstrosity from Sweden, and tipped it back, some of it rolling down the sides of his face and onto his neck. He laid back and flexed his toes. 

The last forty-eight hours had been, in a word, chaos.

First Monday had come, clouds heavy and black over London. They'd reminded Harry of the swirling mass of mists that used to accompany Dementor attacks. He'd cut his morning run short and nearly collided with the owlet from Maude's Mailing on his way upstairs, which was probably as unpleasant a way possible to discover that he was the face gracing the cover of the Prophet. The story was sensationalized in classic Prophet style—he had to give it to them, he'd thought, grinding a piece of toast and marmalade to a paste in his mouth under the watchful eye of a worried Kreacher—they'd taken a story with legs and forced it to complete a marathon. The photo selected was of Harry grinning quite convincingly, head dipped towards Justin's lascivious mouth nodding at something he said, the both of them clapping and clapping and clapping on loop at the Halloween ball. The meat of the main article went into the details that Cuffe and his staff could prove: the restraining order against Justin, the outline of the altercation they'd had off King's Road, the "no comment" on Harry's behalf, and the trifle of legalese from Justin's solicitor denying all charges. The stuff of libel was trailed like breadcrumbs across sections A, B, C, D, and F—Cuffe hadn't found a way to tuck it into E, which was Sport and Game, but Harry was certain that he'd find a way come Tuesday. There were eyewitness reports of the building shifting and off-the-record quotes from a Ministry civil servant sent to Obliviate Muggles in its wake. There was a twinned "were they/weren't they?" column going into all the signs that Harry and Justin had or hadn't been dating, complete with an illuminated calendar going back to the January previous. On and on, sightings and opinions, an excuse to re-use photos from old events that hadn't been fit to print, to give inches to ornery Wizengamot fellows to air their grievances about Harry's performance of late, and to those who thought that the whole affair was one more blow to the moral fabric of good (read: straight) and upstanding (read: pureblooded) magical society.

It was just as he was going to do something rash, something malicious and ill-informed, that Harry noticed a plain card on the table. It was hardly a note, just two words and some initials scratched hastily with a quill.

_Call me._

_V.C._

And against his best efforts to undermine himself and do something that would feel good in the short term, like set his barrister to destroy Barnabas Cuffe, or Apparate directly into Gawain Robards suite of offices at the Ministry and sock him squarely in the jaw, Harry had sat up from his chair, pulled his mobile from his back pocket, and had listened to Victoria when she picked up. Because though Victoria Cresswell had at times been a thorn in Harry's side, drove him to distraction, left him headachey, overworked and almost always overwhelmed, she'd always been in Harry's corner.

"Always," she'd said meaningfully over the phone, and Harry couldn't fault her for that. At that point, she hadn't slept in almost two days, stick-handling requests from the press about the Harry-Justin fiasco, and calls from other clients who had heard rumours of her being pulled into Auror headquarters for questioning, and Harry's icy silence. And through that, she'd done right by him. Threatened the pants off most of the junior and some of the senior staff at the Prophet about daring to print with anything featuring even a whiff of who "the other man" could be that drove "the two love-birds apart" and assuaged the many wealthy and well-connected people that Harry had driven to madness by his sudden and last-minute cancellations of _everything_ , without warning.

It was her instinctive protectiveness of Draco's privacy in addition to his that had led him, after letting her talk at him until she was out of breath, to her office and attempt to help her weather the storm.

"What do you call this colour?" Harry continued to eye the ceiling with just one eye open, allowing the other to take a much-deserved nap.

"'Just in Thyme,'" she said. "It's got _Justin_ right there off the top, but ignoring that, I think it's a lovely colour."

"Mmm," Harry made a sound of agreement. "Might steal it, use it around the house. Wouldn't mind trying to redecorate the place, for real this time."

"You weren't really trying to before? It was happening by accident, was it?" 

Harry contemplated responding but waved a hand instead, letting it fall to thump against the side of the chaise with a heavy thud. 

"It's complicated," he said instead.

"I'll have T—" She stopped herself, ending on a tutting sound. "I'll have my interior decorator come by yours. Trust me—let a professional have at it. The quality of light from the windows and blah, blah." Some crinkling sound followed as she sought out the few remaining soggy chips left in the newspaper rubbish on the ground next to her. They were both running on greasy takeaway and too much Pepper-Up Potion—Harry would be surprised if either of them made it home unless they found a way to peel themselves off the cushions in the next half hour.

"You going to take up decorating then?" 

The way she asked, Harry couldn't tell if the question was sincere or mocking. He didn't have the energy to care.

"Dunno," he answered honestly. "I just can't do public life anymore. Can't bear smiling for another camera or the thought of dragging anyone else into it. It's not—I can't ask for someone to do that for me. I don't want that to be the price of admission to being with me."

Harry's head rolled easily to the side, heavy at the end of his neck. He watched Victoria nod slowly, chewing a chip while taking a drag of her Nat Sherman. 

"It took its toll on you," she croaked. Her voice was shot from so many calls, by fire and phone. Harry didn't know where she got the tenacity to do it. "I could see that. But I saw my job to get you out there, to turn one Galleon into ten so that by the time this day came, your nest egg would be—well, it's a fortune now, isn't it?"

Harry smiled softly. "It is."

"And you don't even want it," she said wistfully. He chuckled, putting a strain on his neck to do it.

"And I don't even want it," he agreed.

They lay like that as the sun crept up over the London skyline, though no one could see that happening. The quality of light filtering into the windows simply lightened gradually, from the tungsten orange glow of night to the thin yellow of early morning. Soon it would be dull white, and Harry would be face down in bed at Grimmauld, the curtains shut, praying that he'd find the strength to get out of bed again the next day and the day after that. The flurry of media activity and crisis communications had been enough to push down the fact that no owl had come in yet from Draco. It made manageable the low-grade burn in his gut, had kept it from turning into an all-consuming fire. Harry had said his part in his daily letters, and more. Had offered Legilimency, to open the cavern of his brain for Draco to poke and prod at, something he would find unthinkable with anyone else, but for him, he'd try anything. Anything but that word, that heavy, four-letter-word that seemed to be little more than an excuse to get hurt, but Harry was confident that today was the day things would change. Because today's headline would shed new light on the story, and though Harry wouldn't have a comment for any of the reporters that would surely come calling, he had nothing but time to explain to Draco. To share his memories with him—any memories, every one, he didn't care so long as it meant they could go back to that insulated time they'd shared together.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" 

Harry nodded, let out a sigh caught someone between exhausted and dreamy. 

"How could you tell?" he asked. Victoria hoisted herself into a seated position, yanking at the hem of her skirt to extract another inch of it down over her thighs. It was of no use; she was stuck to the seat. Why she always insisted on leather furniture, Harry would never understand.

"You look starry-eyed even with your eyes closed, Potter. It's about the only time other than when you're feigning a smile that your forehead isn't twinging into a frown, and don't bother trying to bluff with me about your counterfeit smiles. I've been in this business far too long to be fooled."

Harry sat up halfway, the muscles in his core screaming at him not to bother, and then lay back again. He folded his hands over one another in the centre of his chest.

"Thank you," Harry said. "For doing this with me. I—"

"Don't bother," she held up a hand and gave him one of her own seldom smiles. "It was the least I could do, with Tom's fuckery. Right under my nose too— _ergh!_ "

She swiped loose hair, somehow frizzy and limp at the same time, back from her face, the better to drop it into her hands and huff. They'd both engaged in demolishing a fair number of things in the name of _Tom's fuckery_ —there weren't any cute glass figurines left in her office to break.

The delicate whoosh of an owl's wings signalled the morning's post coming in, and that was enough for Harry to push himself up to sit. 

"That's my last interview," Harry said, and though Victoria made a snoring sound, one of her less dignified laughs, Harry meant it. "I'd love to keep you on for PR for the charity. I was serious when I said that—yesterday? Monday?" Victoria tipped the owl from the low bowl of coins kept for that purpose on the coffee table between them. She unfurled it, smoothing it flat between them on the table, her tired eyes resting on his inky ones gleaming out from the front cover. She smiled broadly, hard work having paid off.

"I'd like that," she said, and that was all there needed to be said about it. Harry wasn't going to punish her for having a rat in her ranks. "Not that housing for orphans is the sexiest topic on this green earth—"

"Victoria," Harry said warningly, and she gave him a wave, spun the paper till it faced him. 

She was loyal, and he felt loyalty as keenly as he felt love, probably. He'd stick with her till the end of days, most likely, and she to him.

His gaze paused on the paper. It had been a hard thing, him giving the interview, but he knew it was the only way to get through to Draco, to make the grand gesture he needed and deserved. He'd put the key questions of the intrigue surrounding his supposed tryst with Justin to bed, confirming the run-in, the vague threats, the betrayal that was having a friend be revealed as a foe. He'd given enough to the public to satiate their desire to _know_ him, that in conjunction with his memoir hitting bookshelves in two days, he wouldn't have to give another interview as long as he lived, as far as he was concerned. It made his skin crawl, this attempt at vulnerability in such a public way, but now that it was over, he no longer found his stomach churning as he re-read the words he'd already done the hard work of saying allowed.

And he'd poured his heart out, a mess of viscera, right there for anyone to see. Said all that he hadn't had the courage to say in person, about a man outside of the spotlight who held his affection, who he'd wait for—"He has my heart, even if we have to keep our lips apart,"—and now all he had to do was wait, and to hope.

 _The Saviour Speaks_ read the headline, a picture of Harry as he was now—hollow-cheeked and lightly bearded, casually seated in Victoria's office, dressed in his own, unpretentious clothing—white t-shirt under a woollen pullover and black jeans—he looked perfectly self-assured in his sinewy body. Fully grown, no longer the rangy boy who'd fought a war, so desperate to please everyone. Gone was the put-on exuberance—he'd sat quietly between questions, taken the time to pause and think through his answers. Hadn't offered a fake smile to smooth over an awkward moment when inappropriate questions were raised simply to see if they would stoke his ire. He was a man with little left to prove, but still full of that hope that he held, shining very clearly in his eyes from behind the frames still scented lavender by Draco's thoughtful potion. 

"You did well," Victoria said, and Harry felt that as her way of saying that he'd done well to make it this far, and he didn't have to go any further down the path of a star. He could rest, now, and so he left, ready to do just that.

He wished Victoria goodbye and, when asked later, wouldn't recall falling asleep in the taxicab home. He made it up the stairs with the aid of Kreacher, who pulled off his shoes but otherwise left him to sleep on top of his coverlet, the t-shirt of Draco's that he always slept with now clutched in his claw-like hands, and he slept properly for the first time in weeks. He slept, through firecalls, and slept even when Luna popped over and hovered at his door, glad to be able to report to his friends that he was, indeed, alive and breathing, and better than that, resting. And in that sleep, he dreamt of another world, one where he woke up to the smells of coffee and freshly laundered sheets, a world where when he woke, it was to the rustling of paper and the deep voice of the person he loved rumbling in his ear, saying, "Good morning, love." Saying, "Welcome back." 

* * *

**Sunday, December 21, 2003 | Winter Solstice**

_Just a look,_ Harry thought, stomping his feet to force blood back into his frigid toes. _Just one look, and I'll go. Nothing wrong with waiting to see him, to see with my own eyes that he's okay._

That's what Harry had been telling himself all day. The slippery fabric of the invisibility cloak threatened to fall from between his fingers, and he gripped it with renewed vigour, waiting and watching patiently. He'd had hardly any use for it of late; this was the first time he'd pulled it off the hook behind his bedroom door in weeks. Without the game of telephone going on, his location and plans shared amongst a litany of reporters and photographers, he found his ability to go about his business unperturbed newly refreshing. The things he needed for the house were largely Muggle in origin—plaster and paint, nails and screws, wool rugs for the floors and fabric for curtains and on and on. The promised decorator had owled him midday on Wednesday, came over first thing Thursday with a crew of five brusque women and men who gave him tight smiles and then started measuring everything in sight, tapping walls for perceived thickness, and debating, loudly, on which charms made the most sense to use considering the era of the build, and the provenance of the flooring and so many other details about the house Harry hadn't bothered to decipher. By Friday, she had taken over Harry's life completely. She went only by the letter "G" and gave off strong Trelawney vibes, swathed in sari's of raw silk, her hazel eyes magnified to the size of saucers through her bottlecap glasses. She'd talked over the broad strokes of what Harry wanted—open, airy, a place where one felt like they could _breathe_ easily, but could be hidden from view—"Like a private garden," she said, with a knowing twinkle in her eyes—and she took it from there. He'd been kept preoccupied with the tasks she sent him on—choosing between this or that oak, and stains for the frames for future artworks that would hang on Grimmauld's walls, or needing to touch the fabric on the bolt at the warehouse across town, because these were the linens he'd been setting his table with for years to come. It was good to be busy, and G had kept him exactly that until Sunday came, a day of rest for the entire crew working on "the Grim Project," as they called it, a name that Kreacher for some reason found delightful, smiling eerily whenever someone said it. Now that the crew wasn't around and G hadn't any errands left to send him on, Harry found himself under his invisibility cloak and stomping his feet against the cold because he hadn't anything to do for two hours before dinner, and he just needed to see Draco. That was it, to see him, and he could be off.

It was early evening yet, but the streets were dark already, the sun setting at its ungodly hour on this, the shortest day of the year. A flood of youth had been exiting the building across the street over the past few minutes, parents reminding them to pull up the backs of their trainers and zip their coats as they collected them and bundled them off. A woman in a rusted-out Fiat hatchback honked the horn and held it until her son emerged from the building, dragging his feet the long walk over to the car. Harry winced as he slammed the door, and they were off, the tyres crunching on the thin layer of frost that had accumulated on the pavement.

 _Just one look_ —he thought, turning back to the entrance, and there he was. A head taller than the other person leaving the building alongside him, a woman that turned to lock the door behind them. Draco gave her a hug and a wave as she skipped backwards, yelling, "See you next week!" before sprinting off, not likely to but trying her damnedest to catch the bus rushing by the cross street down the block.

Draco pulled out a knit cap of grey—his favourite, Harry warmed to see—and tugged it down to cover the tips of his ears, gazing up at the darkening sky. Harry stopped breathing, catching himself from the instinctive step towards the slight figure across the street. Draco closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath through his nose, the oversized tote bag on his shoulder slouching off the edge of it and catching at his fingertips, just-but-not-quite grazing the ground.

Harry exhaled as he did, grateful to have the chance to see his features so clearly under the glow of the street lamp. _He'll catch cold, wearing his jacket open like that_ , Harry thought, not so unlike the mothers who'd recently given similar advice to their children only moments before. Draco's puffy black jacket was dangling open, a v-neck t-shirt underneath, grey joggers and trainers below. The joggers were rolled down so that the soft fuzz of their fleecy insides were visible, a strip of his stomach between them and the hem of his shirt, and Harry was struck by how badly he ached to touch that strip. Draco rolled his head till his chin hit his chest and then rubbed at his neck, sighing. He'd be sore now and wouldn't stretch properly when he got home unless forced to. _He should take a bath, and someone should make him dinner. Something warm and soothing, heavy, he's too thin—a curry with extra butter hidden in it, or he likes congee, take him for that, maybe, or—_

Draco lifted his head and gave the street a quick check both ways, hoisting the tote back on his shoulder. He was about to cross the street towards Harry, and that wasn't a problem; Harry had to remind himself that he was invisible, after all. Draco gave a little hop out from behind a car pulling out from the kerb and jogged across the street, and Harry stood still, wondering if he'd Apparate home around the corner, or if he'd take the Tube, but then the look on Draco's face went from serene to serious, and he was walking directly for Harry, and before he could do much of anything about it, he'd snapped a bony hand out and brushed the silken fabric.

"Fuck," Harry breathed.

Draco grasped for it again as Harry stumbled back, staying just out of reach. He stopped and huffed, his bottom jaw jutting forwards, eyes wide.

"Yes, _fuck_ , indeed, Harry. Take that fucking thing off this instant."

Harry was careful to roll his eyes before pulling the cloak up and over his head, bundling it up into a messy ball in his hands.

"I can—"

"Explain? Yes, I'm sure," Draco spat. He crossed his arms and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the picture of frantic discontent, nose twisting around like a little rabbit's against the cold. Harry thought it was all so adorable, how peeved he seemed. 

"Spit it out, then," he said. "Though may I say, I called it."

"Called what?" Harry asked though he screwed his eyes shut as soon as he asked.

"The _stalker_ bit, you fucking psycho. What part of 'leave me alone' didn't you understand?"

Harry swallowed hard, stuffing the cloak into the extensible pocket of his jacket, stalling for time. He peered over Draco's shoulder and behind his own, checking for the possibility of a Muggle about having a hard time believing that a man had suddenly appeared from thin air on the street only a little after five in the afternoon on an otherwise uneventful Sunday in December, but there was no one but the two of them.

"You weren't supposed to know," he started lamely. He knew it was an inadequate response, sounded stupid to his own ears. "I just—"

"I can hear you, remember? I can always fucking hear you. Over here, brooding and worrying—" He didn't finish the sentence.

"And what?" Harry asked. 

_Could you hear me loving you? Wanting to make you feel whole again?_

"That doesn't make it better, you know?" Draco fidgeted with his cap, pulling it lower first in the back, then the front. "If I didn't know you were here. You're still not honouring my request."

They stared at one another, and it came over Harry in a flood that this was the first time they'd been so close that they could touch in weeks. His heart rate sped up at the thought— _he could reach out and brush your cheek, his fingers are right there, his mouth—_ and Draco seemed to have the same realization at the same time, taking a half-step back from him.

"Why are you here, anyway? You're meant to be at the solstice ball. You're always there." His forehead wrinkled with a frown—he was genuinely worried about Harry skipping out on the event, it seemed. "It's a big deal—won't the Ministry be peeved to be missing its esteemed guest?"

"I cancelled," Harry swallowed, the real answer harder than he thought it would be to admit, "and I just really, really needed to see that you're okay," he stated, his voice somehow smooth and calm, even as each beat of his heart grew louder in his own ears. Draco opened his mouth to retort, and then deflated. Harry thought he must look particularly pitiful to shut him up so easily, lips smashed together in a thin line.

"I'm as fine as I can be, under the circumstances," he said instead, and Harry nodded like that made sense. He rubbed his hands together, palms rough against one another, and wondered what would happen if he could get Draco to take his hand. He wasn't wearing gloves at all, and Harry wanted to point it out, felt like it was a bright, wonderful thing that he didn't feel the need to follow Lucius' inane rules while among Muggles, but he swallowed the thought. It was a spectacular feeling, though, a brilliant, pure one. _Look_ , he wanted to see _, it's so good to see you out in public, just as you are. Perfect._

"And you?" Draco asked. Harry, who had been busy grinning at the pavement, looked up and caught Draco's eyes. His question was asked sincerely, though the mask was up, so who knew how he felt about it. Harry rubbed his chin, thinking about it. He wanted to stretch out the conversation as long as he could, drink in the details, watch the shadows as they grew long down the cords of Draco's neck, as the tip of his nose pinked from the chill. It felt good to talk, and he would stay on the sidewalk and chat with Draco until hypothermia set in if he could.

"Kreacher's cross with me. Says you'd still be around if only I'd given you better presents when you'd first come over." His own face quivered with a smile—Draco's held fast, though he looked away to zip up his jacket, and Harry was sure that was a tell. He'd wanted to smile too, but wouldn't let him have that. Not so easily. He tried another tack. 

"I've been staying busy, to keep from—" he wanted to say _think about you every minute_ , knew Draco wouldn't like that, but found another truth that fit the bill, that was honest "—doing what I'd normally do." The tiny muscles around Draco's eyes tightened. He didn't like the reference to Harry going back to old habits, it seemed, and this thought buoyed Harry. _He cares, he still cares, even a little bit, even if he hates it._

"I'm sleeping again. I was becoming afraid after you left, that I might never sleep properly without your Dreamless Sleep again."

"You can find plenty of it in stores," Draco said dismissively. Harry gave a few slow nods. His eyes roamed Draco's face—everything about it seemed more explicit now that there were no wisps of hair to frame it. His skin was poreless, smooth porcelain, with those kissable, rose-stained lips and those haughty, almondine eyes, clear and cold and watching Harry, waiting—for what?

"It's not really the lack of Dreamless Sleep that makes sleeping hard." Draco swallowed, refusing to look away. 

"I miss you," Harry spoke it quietly because otherwise, his voice would break around it, and then he gave in and looked away to his hands, rougher than they had been in months, the nails shredded down to nothing. He had to stay strong, keep Draco talking, and get to the meat of things.

"Did you read it?" He directed the question to his shoes, staring at his hands to keep from staring at Draco. The _it_ in question was the interview—they both knew that. Harry knew Draco, knew that it would only be through an astronomical feat of spite that he would be able to avoid reading not just the interview itself, but every associated opinion piece about it.

He could tell from the way the tips of Draco's trainers moved that he was scrunching up his toes the way he did when talk make him nervous, and it melted some of Harry's worry away.

"Of course I read it," Draco said tightly. "And before you ask, I've read your letters too."

"And?" Harry looked up, and he caught the second where Draco had been staring at him without the pressure of also being watched, at how much want coursed through him too. He'd been taking in an eyeful of Harry, and he was pissed and flustered, that combination of frustration and attraction that had been brewing between them for ages, for years, and though he was obviously conflicted about the feelings he held, Harry knew that the _want_ was still there.

"And?" He asked more forcefully, closing the distance between them. If Harry leant in and tilted his jaw, they could kiss, and it could all be better, he thought. This terrible, stilted awkwardness would melt away, and they'd be left in each other's arms, exactly as they should be. 

"And I still don't know if I can trust you," Draco said, voice strained. The edges of his lips pulled down, a melancholy floating beneath the surface of his composure. This close, Harry could smell him, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His deodorant, like sea salt, and his sweat, that clean musky smell, so familiar as the smell of their sex. 

"I've been lied to, before, and I can't bear to be made a fool again. And what I need most is time and space to figure that out."

"Okay," Harry said. He watched as his Adam's apple worked in his pale throat, breathed him in again, memorizing the moment. Time and space were difficult, were the two things Harry most wanted to share with Draco, but they'd be worth it if it meant more of him, one day, somehow.

"Okay," he repeated. "My offer always stands. You can look at my memories, you can see for yourself—"

"I know," Draco interrupted. 

"Alright, well. I'll go then," Harry jerked a thumb over his shoulder and turned to walk away, what he should have done ages ago. His mind was already on the long route home that he'd walk, and how good the floor of the tub would feel to sit in once he got there, and how he could do it, could stay all in one piece until dinner, and then he could make it to bed and sleep, and how it was just one foot in front of the other, one second becoming a minute becoming the days until Draco was ready to give it a go again, and he was thinking these thoughts so that when the lightning-quick grip on his arm pulled him roughly back he wasn't prepared for it in the least and they collided, his body falling into Draco's. Harry looked up into his eyes, mouths so close that the kiss was right there, was inevitable. He could feel through the soft fabric of Draco's trousers that he was hard already, and he let out an undignified pant, hands reaching up to hold on to his shoulders. Draco gripped his forearm still, so tight it was like he was afraid that if he let go, Harry might slip away.

"Which is why it's not good that you're here, right now, like this," Draco snarled. "Because you know how very hard you are to say no to, when you come to me, looking the way you do, all fucking— _demure._ After all the things you've said, and you've written, and I don't know how to feel about you, Harry." 

His breaths came quickly, and his displeasure with the situation showed in the cracks of his veneer. This was him trying to talk himself out of what was happening, but Harry knew the score. There wasn't any going back now. What they had for one another was an unstoppable force. It was sparks and fire, electricity and magic. Harry pressed his palm into Draco's cock, and he pressed his cheek to Harry's cheek and groaned into his ear, a sound that started low in his body and barely made its way out of his throat, and Harry needed that sound, needed more of it.

"This is why friends with benefits could never work for us, pet," Draco spoke into his hair. "We were never friends first. That's why I don't trust you. I don't have a history of trusting you, and I have to be smart about who I trust. Understood?"

"Yes," Harry breathed into his neck, and he so wanted to suck on it, remembering that first time in the loo and how badly he'd wanted to mark Draco's perfect, pale skin even then,

_Mine,_

thrumming through him,

_mine, mine, mine,_

but he couldn't. Not now.

 _Not yet_ , he consoled himself, _not just yet. But if you play the game right, soon. So soon._

Draco swallowed and pulled back from Harry to look into his eyes, eyes that must have reflected exactly as much lust as was held in his own. It angered him, to give in to sensation; Harry knew that. Draco craved control in all things. But he'd rather have Draco irritated and sore about it than not at all.

"As far as I'm concerned, we were fuck buddies and there's a good chance that we should have stayed that way."

The words didn't sting because Harry refused to believe them.

 _He's doing it again,_ Harry realized. _He's re-writing us like he re-wrote his last relationship, to the version where he didn't make a mistake. But he's not mistaken, and you're going to prove it to him. You have to._

Harry pressed his palm harder into the hardening shaft of Draco's cock and craned his neck up, looking up into Draco's lidded eyes, breathing in his exhalations. He didn't care at all who turned onto the street now, the cars passing them by, not when he had his hands full of what he most needed. 

"Take me home and let me prove you wrong," Harry said.

* * *

It started out rough, and that was okay because what Harry needed was rough. 

"This," Draco slipped a finger through the gap between Harry's shirt buttons, "off."

Harry undid them with precision, Draco watching as the threadbare white t-shirt he wore underneath was revealed. Draco stood back, removing his jacket and cap but not bothering with his own shirt, tugging down his trousers to mid-thigh. Harry shivered at the thudding sound of his trainers, oddly loud in the empty, darkened hallway. 

"Do you..." Harry plucked at Draco's shirt, and Draco gave him a curt shake of his head and spun him around by a hand at his shoulder so that he faced the sideboard, a new addition to the hallway, not so much as looking him in the eyes. Harry's hands didn't fumble as he loosened his trousers and pulled them down along with his pants, his prick falling out, thickening at the promise of Draco's touch. 

Draco helped him by stomping onto his pants and trousers to push them from his knees to his ankles. His hand found the back of Harry's neck, palm to spine as he pushed him over the edge of the sideboard, stopping only when Harry could see himself reflected in the cabinetry's darkly polished surface. Harry couldn't make out the words whispered behind him but felt the sudden, strange emptiness of a preparatory spell zinging through him, lube just as suddenly in him, a cool, awkward feeling. All the breath left his body in a gust, surprise stealing his breath. It wasn't hot, wasn't going to be pushed into him tenderly with teasing fingers, just there, utilitarian. 

He swayed, unsteady as one of Draco's fingers circled his hole and pushed inside, an easy enough slide. He played with the same couple inches, and Harry hissed when he added another, perfunctory. 

"Is that okay?" he asked, and he stopped long enough for Harry to answer _yes,_ his breath making a cloud of fog on the wood that disappeared as soon as it had appeared.

Draco pulsed the fingers back inside of him, scissoring them apart, though it wasn't easy. Harry was struck by the silence—there were normally so many words; he missed the narration. Within a few minutes, Harry was succumbing to the feeling, pushing his hips back to deepen the slide of those precious fingers moving inside of him.

"How long has it been?" Draco asked suddenly, stilling. 

The question took Harry off guard. He lifted his head and turned to catch Draco's eye over his shoulder. His face was pinched, almost pained. 

"Since you." 

That stopped him moving at all. His jaw clenched—Harry's answer angered him, somehow—maybe because it made him more sympathetic, or maybe because he assumed him to be lying. Either way, Draco's icy demeanour was fearsome. 

"Wider," he said. Harry felt it as a command in his bones, pushing his legs as wide as they would go and then, when that wasn't enough, banishing the clothes around his ankles to the corner of the room and arching his back to display his arse.

" _Fuck_." The word came out like a puff from Draco's mouth, and Harry found another inch to curl his lower back, displaying himself as perfectly as he knew how. He was Draco's pet, his slag, needed to remind him of what he was missing, punishing him as he was for a crime he hadn't committed.

Draco's free hand pushed Harry's face back into the wood, holding him by his neck, not slipping as Harry knew he wanted to those few inches up and into his hair. When he took the pressure off, and Harry kept his face close to the surface, the little clouds of fog appearing and disappearing again, that was when Draco slapped Harry's left arse cheek and then held on, kneading it firmly. 

Harry swallowed the sound he wanted to make, sure it would displease Draco if he had to be told to be quiet. Precome dripped from his cock as he realized that there hadn't been a _Muffliato_ cast at the door—anyone in the hallway would be able to hear them, clear as day.

"Another?" Draco said, barely a question. 

"Yes," Harry gasped, "please," and just like that a third finger joined the first two, all three breaching him, prompting a deep exhale. He pressed his forehead into the smooth surface beneath it and begged his body to relax. It was no matter that he often slicked up three of his own fingers and came with those inside himself; the angle wasn't right when he did it, the stretch never the same as when Draco did it to him. He shifted onto the very tips of his toes and pushed against the fingers the better to suck them inside of him, having to remind his body that _yes, yes, yes_ he wanted this. He couldn't control the face he made or the little sounds of pain that escaped him as he got used to it, his hands tensed on the wood. Draco pumped in and out, no, _You're doing so well, pet,_ or hand on his lower back to force him to arch properly. But Harry could do it, could be good even without the cherished words spoken for him.

"More?" Draco asked, and Harry made a garbled sound, his mind floating somewhere outside his body.

Draco backed off immediately, fingers slipping from him and Harry was already choking out his answer to the unspoken edict. When Draco asked a question, he was to get a proper answer. _More_ , was really, _if you want more, convince me why you deserve it._

"Yes," the word had to be forced out through his constricted throat. "More, please. I need your cock," he squeezed the words out, and that was enough, the fingers added again. Harry moaned and widened his legs, straightened up onto his elbows so he could look back at where Draco's hand disappeared into his body.

"Turn around," Draco told him, and he did as he was told, accepting the stretch of the three fingers deeper and deeper, and soon Draco's breathing was steady at the back of his neck, and he could cry with how much he needed that, just that. He was losing himself, if only a bit, his cock bumping into the backs of Harry's thighs, promising what came next.

"I need your fat cock inside me, please," Harry managed to string the whole sentence together before a moan cut off his ability to speak. His cock was drooling precome now, Draco's smell and the feel of his warm breaths panting at Harry's spine perfect. It was all so good, Harry could pretend it was just like _before_ , as though the intervening weeks had never happened at all. 

"You're the only one who's stretched me open like this." He shifted his hips back, crying out when Draco's knuckles found his taint, aching for a little more as Draco's hard prick nudged at the inside of his thigh, precome smearing into the hair there. Draco didn't say anything, but Harry knew that did something for him. He owned Harry; he needed to be reminded, was all.

"Please," Harry begged, " _please,"_ and Draco stopped altogether, fingers removed and wet on his hip as he lined himself up, the immense push of his cockhead taking their place at the entrance to his body, and Harry grit his teeth, afraid that if he let out a moan that evidenced how good the burn felt that Draco would stop.

"Use your hands to hold yourself open for me," Draco said, and Harry did it without thought. He grabbed firmly at the meat of each of his cheeks and pulled them apart, balancing on his toes, forehead pushed into the wood, and like this, like _this,_ he didn't need to be told to know how good he was. 

Draco took a moment as Harry held still, the obscene squelching sound of more lube being spread on his cock. He lined back up and first came just the head of his prick pushing against his entrance, and when Draco took hold of Harry by the swells between his shoulders and neck and pushed, forcing his way inside, they had to hold in that position because Harry was tight, unused in weeks, and what he really needed was a warm hand on his back, Draco's characteristic _relax_ delivered with a smile and a breathy kiss, but he wasn't going to get that, so he breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth, each tiny shift reverberating through his entire body. Every muscle in his body was strung tight, and each breath brought a new loosening as he relaxed around the intrusion, learned to accept it as needed and not a painful nuisance. 

"You need that, don't you?" Draco leaned in to growl the question in his ear. Harry nodded, panting a few breaths before he struggled to answer, "Yes, sir." Draco gasped, surprised at the honorific, and it was only Harry that knew that did it for him, wasn't it?

 _I'm so much more than your fuck buddy, and you know it,_ Harry thought as he thrust back, impaling himself another inch on Draco's cock, making them groan in unison. _I know how you like it because you taught me, and I can remind you._

"You're going to be so fucking full of me, aren't you?" Draco whispered as he started to move inside of him, and it was slow, an agonizing slide in, each inch worked for. Draco held his breath at the deepest point, the signal that he was about to roll his hips back and pull out, almost-all-the-way-but-not-quite, and then back again. Harry was delirious with how _fucking_ good it felt. The memories had started to seem too good, like the stuff of dreams, and yet here was, aching, his body stretched wide and filled up so well, so completely, that it was like the alchemy between them went as deep as their bones.

Draco didn't say anything after that, fucking into Harry with slow purpose. He still had the musculature to slam him until he was sore, arse stretched loose and left gaping just enough that he could slide back in later, because there used to always be a later.

The morning after, or sometimes only a half-hour after he'd last fucked Harry, he would take him again, the two of them barely moving, eels slipping against one another in bedclothes wet from the sweat of their first tumble. Harry could scarcely breathe, it felt so good to have Draco inside of him like this, but he needed to remind Draco of the possibilities too before he lost the chance.

"Remember," Harry panted out between thrusts, holding on to the memories while enraptured in the pleasure of this new one they were making, "remember how often—you were—inside me?"

Draco made a sound like a happy groan, speeding up his thrusts so that the slapping of his hips against Harry's arse cheeks came twice as fast.

"Remember," Harry panted out, louder now to make sure he heard him, "remember how often—we used your come—as lube—for round two?" 

Draco didn't say anything in response, but he slammed into Harry so hard that the window set in the hallway wall rattled in its pane, and Harry started on a long moan that had no end, eyes closed and mouth stuck ajar as Draco changed the angle, his hands pressing down on either side of his ribs, cock fucking up into him so that he rubbed that little bundle of nerves that made Harry feel like he was coming inside out.

He missed this—gasping as Draco fucked him like he was the sexiest thing put on gods green earth, like he'd been made specifically for Draco—had been gifted to him. Draco was close but didn't quite lose himself in Harry. He paused, resting his sweaty forehead against Harry's shoulder for a moment before he pulled him up halfway and hooked an arm across his chest, gripping the opposite shoulder tightly. Not enough to leave little finger bruises, though—not truly hard, not quite the way Harry liked it. Harry braced himself for a punishing pace with one hand on the lacquered top of the sideboard, and the other white-knuckled at its edge, eager for the near-painful fucking he was sure was coming, but as Draco entered him more deeply, he slowed. He pulled Harry back down off his tip-toes to the balls of his feet with a gentle touch at his hip the better to be able to bend him over, and then the touch was gone, hand bunching his t-shirt up in the front, as though to keep from touching his skin.

"Goddamnit, Draco," Harry grit out. "Fuck me."

Harry looked up and saw them reflected in the window at the end of the hallway, Draco's hair a peach halo in the dark pane, and he wanted a proper mirror then so badly to be able to make out the expression on his face. To know if his eyes were open or not.

The sharp jut of where Draco lay his chin on Harry's shoulder was a touch too much, so close to the part that Harry used to beg to be kissed, sucked, bitten, but all he got now were hot gusts of Draco's breath and the press of bone into muscle, and it was going to kill Harry, to be right here, so close, and denied that last inch of intimacy.

He turned his cheek, offering the chance of a kiss, but Draco's eyes were closed to keep from looking at him, and he didn't close the distance. 

_In some ways, this is worse_ , Harry thought, _than nothing._

They still hadn't kissed, that gesture that had always meant something to the both of them. Draco's breathing had become erratic even though his thrusts didn't follow. He'd found himself again, taken back control from the wild place that Harry had sought to bring him, and fucked him purposefully, and with great self-control. Somewhere in his rhythmic fucking, Harry's body decided to respond, his cock pulling up to full hardness from its previous flopping between his legs.

"I'm—" Draco's breath hitched, "fuck, I'm going to come," Draco said, and again Harry braced himself for something hard, but it was smooth, the signal of Draco's coming inside of him the raw, pained sound he made as he did it, jaw slack as he pressed his forehead between Harry's shoulders, and then the slick feeling as his thrusts juddered faster, hips slapping Harry's arse faster, and then slowed to a stop.

When he pulled out, he took Harry by a hip and turned him around and before Harry could say anything, could even look in his eyes he was on his knees, his right hand sliding in between his cheeks to slip two fingers inside the channel that he'd made slippery and hot.

" _Jesus Christ_ , Draco," Harry swore at the ceiling as he knocked a fist into the hardwood and groaned with the perfection of it. Draco wasted no time taking Harry's prick into his mouth, holding the base steady with his left hand as he leisurely gave a come hither motion to his insides and sucked him until he was incoherently panting, thighs shaking with the effort of keeping his body upright.

 _Look at me_ , he thought, _I know you want to. Look at me, look at me, just please, look at me_.

Draco kept his eyes closed and his mouth a tight ring around Harry's cock. He stayed at the top, tongue rimming the underside of the crown, left hand tugged smoothly at Harry's shaft as the fingers inside him found the button and pressed, insistent, and with utmost proficiency he had Harry coming warm spurts on his tongue, mewling Draco's name all the while.

"Draco," Harry said, chancing it and sliding one of his hands from the top of his peachy-pink head down to his ear, marvelling at how downy soft it was, even shorn so short.

Draco hadn't looked up at him once, blinked instead at the sight of Harry's cock, slippery wet as he sucked off, and that hurt almost as much as it did when he stood up, pulling soaked fingers from Harry and wiping them on his jeans, not waiting for the charm to wash him clean. Harry slumped into the wall and watched as he placed a hand to his neck, bowing his head on a heavy sigh. He couldn't read his expression, his face gone a little soft from the release of sex, pinpricks of sweat on his nose.

"I shouldn't have done that," he said, summoning Harry's clothes from the corner and holding them at arms-length out to him.

"Draco—"

"Dress, please."

Harry did as he was told as Draco tucked his prick away and leaned against the wall opposite from Harry, arms tightly crossed, hands holding on to his own ribcage.

"I'm sorry," Harry said. "If this, you know. Confuses things for you." His belt tinkled as he threaded it through the loops because his hands were shaking.

"Sex isn't an apology, Harry," Draco said quietly, "and it's not a punishment. I'm not going to fuck you into absolution."

"I—" Harry started to speak but shut his mouth when he realized that he had hoped, secretly, that perhaps sex between them could be both. "Of course you could tell that I wanted it to hurt, couldn't you?"

"That's not fair to me, Harry, and you know that." He closed his eyes. "Within rules, within reason, I'm all for it, but I'm not apologizing for not giving you what you wanted," Draco said. He didn't even sound angry, just exasperated. "If you're looking for someone to punish you, you're going to have to find someone else."

"I'm not—you don't—" Harry licked his lips, scared at what was happening. It had all been too fast, so good even when it wasn't good at all. He was a mess around Draco, why couldn't he think properly? 

"I'm the one who's sorry. I am sorry, I was wrong to think those things."

"Yes, well, that also wasn't an acceptance of your apology. What just happened was a mistake."

"Draco—"

"Leave," he said forcefully, as though Harry were a frightening intruder.

Harry wanted to fight it, but the pinched look on Draco's face spoke to the fact that he was barely holding it together and this wasn't the time to push. It was a look that was dangerous; he felt cornered, fearful, hostile, all of it. Harry shrugged on his coat and flipped up the hood, its sodden edges cold against his skin, and then toed into his trainers, and when he glanced up, he caught Draco looking at him in an unguarded way. He could see it there: longing. There was a desperation in the way he held his arms crossed tightly against his body, a body that looked as sharp and hard as it had felt against Harry's back. Desperation not to give in and let wandering fingers reach out. He was holding himself back just as much as Harry was laying himself bare.

"Okay. I'm going." He opened the door, but held it ajar, grasping the handle. "I'm sorry that you don't know how much you mean to me. Because you mean the world to me, still."

Draco didn't say anything, holding his breath. Harry really was going to pull the door closed, but he needed to be brave, to say the thing he knew Draco could stand to hear.

"I'm still yours, you know. Know that," he said. 

"Please." Draco breathed the word, as close as Harry had ever heard him to begging, and he closed the door and turned at last and left, back into the black wetness of another winter's night.

Later, nursing apple cider, his toes curled against the heat of a roaring fire that Hermione had lit and Ron felt the need to adjust every few minutes, Harry sighed and said, "I saw Draco today. And, I—I think I have a chance." He hadn't had to look up to know the look his friends shared.

"Define _saw_ for us, Harry," Ron said slowly. Harry cracked a smile.

"We, uh—touched in the biblical sense," Harry said. Ron groaned, flopping onto the floor to arrange a fresh game of Exploding Snap, but Hermione laughed, shaking her head at him. The sound of it spread in his chest, that laugh.

"Was that the wisest idea, friend?" Ron continued. Harry winced an eye, considering it.

"I mean— _no._ But none of this is anyone's version of a wise idea, is it?" He caught the tail end of Ron's prodigious eye roll, and he and Hermione shared a smirk. "I have a chance, though. I could see it, that he wants to believe me. The world has just made it incredibly hard for him to do that, so I have to be patient. That's all."

"Yes, patience, the virtue with which you are so endowed," Ron mumbled under his breath.

It was Hermione's turn to roll her eyes his way. 

"So what are the obstacles in your path, and how do we go about clearing them?" she asked, fumbling around on the side-table and settling back with a quill and a notebook at the ready. Harry turned to her and pulled his knees in, resting his chin there. He was glad to be back in the loop with them, the three of them hatching plans. As they always had, and he hoped, would always find a way back to.

"Well for starters, I'm a bit of a blathering idiot when it comes to—love," Harry said, and her eyebrows promptly shot up as Ron turned very slowly to look first at her, then at him.

"You owe me fifty quid," he said, and when Hermione nodded slowly and said, "That, I do," Harry had the wherewithal to gasp.

"And you call yourself friends. You've been taking _bets_ on whether I'm in love?"

"So you admit that it's love, then?" Hermione said, eyebrows as high as ever, her wallet floating into her outstretched hand so that she could hand Ron his earned notes.

"Yes. I, er, do. And one of the first obstacles I have to get past is convincing him of that, which will also require me being able to say it without throwing up all over myself."

"You've got plenty of time between now and then, not to worry," Hermione said, jotting something down. "You should take an anti-convulsant before attempting any declarations of love. Consider a tranquillizer," she added offhandedly, adding something to the page.

"Alright, so that's one thing. What else?"

Harry considered the question seriously. "Well, I've been told I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I, er, tend to blurt things out without thinking, so hopefully those things can collide and prove useful for once."

"Says...first...things...on...mind, yeah, got that," Ron read over Hermione's shoulder.

"You wouldn't happen to have any evidence of your feelings, would you? Playing to your audience is important, and Draco's very analytical. Something empirical will bolster your case."

Harry bit his lip as he thought about it. About the hidden things—the drawer next to his bed stuffed with pictures and locked with a Permanent Sticking Charm; the hearthstone hiding a preponderance of notes from the future he envisioned for them; the secret place that G had discovered, tucked away in the heart of the house.

"I think I have enough to that end," Harry said, worrying his lip. "It'll have to be enough."

* * *

**Notes** : That's... a little better, isn't it? And it's early! Let's not forget that it's early!

Anyway, the word counts on these chapters keep getting away from me, but I feel like that's a good thing because it keeps you busy between updates!

We're getting down the the last handful of chapters, and I'm so excited to wrap this up and have a finished product out in the world. 

Thank you as always to the intrepid readers and commenters, I truly love reading them and have stuck to responding to every one, because I cherish them! Thank you also just for reading, and leaving a kudos if you like it :) Title taken from Bright Eyes "Lover I Don't Have to Love".

Next chapter by **Friday, December 18** xx


	17. Body Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the old, the dawn of something new.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Substance abuse, depression, implied non-consensual sex

* * *

**Tuesday, December 23, 2003**

Harry lay back on the crunchy, frozen grass of the makeshift pitch behind the Weasley's plot of land, the salt of so much sweat in his eyes making them water.

"That was a foul, Potter!" Ginny yelled from far off to this right. Something thumped the ground—likely the quaffle she’d been holding. "This win is an atrocity!"

"You're just sour because your team always _loses_ ," Ron chucked back at her, landing with an inelegant thud at Harry's feet, and dropping unceremoniously on top of him, thus starting the dogpile that always followed any annual Weasley Family Christmas Quidditch victory.

"Careful there! My ribs, man, my ribs!"

Harry was lucky that his other teammates were significantly less hefty or gangly than Ron; Fleur and Victoire being among their number, along with Angelina, George, and Neville, though George and Neville were kind enough to only lay upon his legs and not atop his chest, as it felt like the rest of them were perfectly complacent with doing.

The wings of the snitch fluttered against his skin, colder than ice and heavy in his fist. It had been a clean win, whatever Ginny's groaning might lead one to otherwise believe. And even though the equipment was for home use rather than regulation standard, with a heavy, slow snitch and lighter quaffles that bounced off their marks rather than landing with bone-smashing ferocity, the game had managed to rouse the same effervescent feeling in Harry it always had managed to during his youth.

Tears trickled down his face, his eyes squinting into the unusually bright late December sun as Ron offered him a hand and pulled him roughly to his feet, kindly picking his broom up from where it had been abandoned and setting it to fly off towards the shed at the edge of the field.

"Great game," he said, shaking his shoulder for effect. "We have _got_ to start playing more often. Some of the lads at work have a pub league going. Well, not just lads, there are ladies too. Dean's in if you wanted to join in the spring?"

Harry contemplated the silver snitch in his hand, wiping his face with last years Christmas pullover. He'd forgotten how therapeutic it was to fly—how very quiet his thoughts got when the wind was whistling in his ears, and he was up high, looking down upon all the little players. And if he’d learned anything over the past few weeks, it was that there was a whole world beyond the walls of Grimmauld place, full of responsibilities and pleasures, and they didn’t all begin and end with Draco Malfoy. And even though it made his chest tight to think about it this way, he had to admit that he’d be better off with a roster of activities that kept him busy and brought him joy, whether or not Draco returned to his former position of importance in Harry’s life.

"Yeah," he nodded, "that'd be great. I'd really like that."

"Brilliant!" Ron whooped at the sky before turning around and getting into an argument with his sister, and Harry turned around to jog across the grass to his godson, knowing that there was little more magical to a child than the snitch that won the game.

All the same, the strings of his heart pulled taut as he approached Teddy and Andromeda, the same way they had when he had been soaring overhead a quarter-hour earlier. Because he'd glanced down and recognized all the many heads of blond and ginger and brunette, and all of sudden a little head of fierce, neon pink had arrived, and Harry had quite nearly fallen off his broom with the shock of it. But it was only Teddy, having visited Narcissa while in tow of Andromeda, clearly having met his older cousin and taken a shine to his new look. And Harry had contemplated for a moment just how wonderful Christmas could have been this year—albeit awkward, and difficult, and probably stilted—but still. He could have been battling Draco for the snitch. He could have shared the kiss of a jubilant winner with him— _Jesus_ how he missed kissing him, never would have guessed that he'd want for something as simple as a kiss so badly—or found solace in a chaste one as the gracious loser. It would have been special, no matter how it all turned out, just to have him there. To see him on a broom, to look across the sky and meet those stormy eyes. To have introduced him as his person, as Harry's new, little family.

 _Mine,_ he still thought, though the word was now following by the feeling of a box cutter making slits in his heart.

"Hey Andromeda" Harry gasped, covering for heartbreak with a grin that came easily whenever Teddy was around. "I thought I spotted a fuzzy tennis ball down here. I was wondering though—where's Teddy?"

"I'm right here!" He giggled and pulled at Harry's sleeve, Harry looking to the rolling hills in the east, frost-bitten white, and then over to the house on the left, and the retreating backs of his team-mates as everyone bundled inside for warm cider and what smelled like, even from a great distance, freshly baked biscuits.

"As you can see, our little Edward has taken a fancy to someone who thinks pink hair is a good look," Andromeda said, pulling Harry in to drop air-kisses to his cheeks. Her tone was jokingly severe; she treated Teddy's abilities as the exceptional and wonderful parts of him that they were.

"Well, I think pink suits you, Ted. Though, have you considered yellow, like a highlighter?" Teddy scrunched up his nose, shaking his head. "Noooo, silly," he said. "You're silly, Harry. I'm allowed pink because Dwaco's allowed pink cause he's a grown-up."

"Dra- like a dram, not Dwa- like Dwight. _Dra_ -co," Andromeda gently tried to correct his pronunciation, but Teddy wasn't paying her any mind any longer. 

"Here," Harry handed him the snitch, watched his eyes, one blue, like Andromeda’s, and the other a grey, a dead ringer for one of Draco's, go wide, and mouth slack with wonder. It was odd, how Harry felt suddenly like he was getting a look at a child that could _be_ Draco's, somehow. It didn't make sense but sent a shiver across his back.

_Pull yourself to-fucking-gether. Children? Are you joking, Harry? You're dreaming of impossible children with your nonexistent boyfriend? Pathetic, it's pathetic what you're—_

"You keep that safe for me until next time," he added with a smile and a ruffle of Teddy's hair.

"Can I play next time?" Teddy held a hand out absently for Harry to grip onto. It was somehow sticky, but Harry didn’t care, stealing glances at the eyes of his godson glued to the snitch as they followed in the rest of the Weasley clan.

"Uh, we'll see about that. If you're good, and we'll need to get you a broom first."

"Grandma says I'm too little," he groused. Harry pulled a face at Andromeda over his head, mouthing the word _sorry_ to let her know that maybe, probably, there was a gift in the shape of a very small broom that would be awaiting little Teddy come Christmas morning.

"Well, your Grandma is a brilliant lady, and I'm sure she'll have the final say about when you get a broom." Andromeda played her part well, admonishing him with a raised brow and then looking to the sky as though for help from a higher power, a look that Harry recognized as having been passed down from the older Black generation to the younger.

There was little talk of brooms though once they reached the house, many winter layers peeled off, and so very many mugs of tea and coffee and mead and hot cider doled out. Conversation quickly moved on to empty, growling bellies and who had control of the wireless, and where-did-I-leave-that and the real showstopper of the holiday—The Wedding. Every other word was about the when of it, and how the proposal had gone and were Hermione’s parents not simply thrilled. It was joyous and pure and helped Harry push thoughts of Draco almost completely from his mind as he relaxed into the casual conversations and lazy games of the late morning, and he really would have barely thought about him at all until Andromeda caught him on his way upstairs for a sneaky nap before lunchtime.

"Harry, before you go. I've meant to tell you—your friend was excellent with Edward," she said, a knowing smile on her face. Harry was careful not to let his surprise show on his.

"Oh, we're not really, uh, friends. Right now. But that's um—"

"Is there something going on between the two of you?"

He removed his hand from the bannister as it became clear that Andromeda's questioning was more pointed than a general aside.

"It's complicated?”

She smirked, and Harry felt a flush growing up his throat.

_Oh, fuck it all._

“Truth be told, right now, I don't know what we are," he admitted reluctantly, her knowing smile refusing to fade in the least.

 _How silly the relationship troubles of twenty-somethings must seem to her_. _How silly they fucking are, honestly. We're just idiots who have no clue what we're doing most of the time._

"Well, whatever is going on between you two, he seems quite preoccupied with it." She shrugged, tucked one arm underneath the other. Flour dusted the pocket of her blouse, humanizing her otherwise impeccable outfit and hairstyle. Harry had to give it to the Black family—they rarely, if ever, looked anything other than immaculately put together.

"I'll give him credit for putting on a _very_ good showing, and he was excellent with Teddy, but the boy seems a bit lost. Are you sure you know what you're doing with him?"

Harry noticed that she wasn’t the only one with something on her shirt—he picked at something blue staining his own. Draco’s frequent comments about how he ought not to bother buying white tops because they all turned out artfully smudged like expressionist paintings came to mind as he picked the unknown substance free. The memory warmed him at the same time that it caused a dull pang in his chest.

"Not in the least," Harry said, and she laughed at him, a rich, deep laugh.

"Well, time's on your side, as they say. Give it some, and don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it, alright?" Harry nodded at her and waved a quick goodbye, left feeling grateful that in Andromeda, he'd found a mother-figure, however distant or awkward it had been at first.

Up in his room, which was really his and Ron's room, but he and Hermione had been upgraded to a bedroom all their own, Harry found a small mailer with his day's assorted mail, alongside a tin wrapped in shimmering blue foil paper. Ripping the envelope of the mailer open with his thumb, he was just unfurling the scroll of parchment it contained when a knock came at the door.

"Yeah?" Ron's ginger head poked in, eyes quickly taking in Harry laying on the bed and the letter in his hands.

"Is that..." he started. Harry frowned shook his head.

"No. Still nothing."

So it had gone for days, and every time, Ron's look a little more _I told you so_ , and a little less I'm Going to Support You As a Best Friend Through Literally Anything. He was tiring of Draco's silence faster than Harry was, was likely to start setting Harry up on dates with the brothers of co-workers within the week, if Harry had to guess.

"Oh, well. That's," he sucked in his breath, "you know. It's not looking great."

"I'm giving it till Christmas," Harry said tersely, as he'd said over and over again, and Ron rolled his eyes and sat at the foot of the bed, playing with the rag blanket folded next to him. His coup de grace was the notes he’d always wanted to share with Draco—proof that his care extended back into their shared history, long before he yelled an ill-timed _I love you_ like a hail mary during that fateful spat in the kitchen of Grimmauld. He’d already packaged them up alongside his final letter, to be sent with a family owl the following morning. He’d shared a draft of it with Hermione for her help revising his grammar, and it had left her stuffy with unspent tears, and Harry had to believe that it would be enough. His heart ached, and his stomach roiled when he thought about them, all that emotion he normally kept bottled up, splashed so openly on the page, so he tried his best not to think about it at all. The quidditch had helped, though now that was gone he was going to need some new thing to preoccupy his time.

"I know. And that's great, to have a time limit.” Harry glared at him, not interested in sarcasm, and Ron held his hands up, the picture of innocence. “Really! I'm not trying to be cute about it, that's—I know it's hard, I can’t imagine how hard, but you've done literally everything you can to reach out to him, and this—"

"Has to stop eventually. Yeah, I know." He turned onto his side, signalling an end to the conversation.

"What's that?" Ron asked. Harry rolled his eyes—privacy wasn't a strong suit of any of the Weasley's.

"I was about to read it and figure that out myself," he mumbled under his breath, scanning the first few lines. It was from Barbara, Robards' secretary, and within the general banalities wishing him a happy Christmas on behalf of the Ministry, and that she hoped she enjoyed the gift of homemade biscuits she'd sent along with the letter, it included an allusion to the Department of Mysteries adding strong new members to their team, and that he should look into available openings should a career path in the field be of interest.

"That tart," Ron breathed, reading the letter over Harry's shoulder. "You know you're the only one in the department she's ever baked biscuits for, right?"

Harry swatted at him, tossed the letter aside. "Could you not?"

Ron took the letter from him and swatted him right back. "Are you going to tell me what all that shite about Mysteries is, or am I going to have to find out for myself and then strangle you about it later?"

Harry sighed, kicking at the blankets to get under them. His whole plan of a nice, quiet nap was quickly disintegrating before his eyes.

"It's...I'm not sure you want to know."

"Harryyyyy," Ron warned, drawing his name out into a long, annoying sound. Harry huffed, covered his face with the blankets. He'd be safer from the ensuring smacks, this way. He opted to speak very quickly, like maybe that way Ron wouldn't be able to pick up on the details.

"I asked Kingsley that in return for not suing the pants off Robards, Draco would be reinstated. It's—this is Robards' way of letting me know Draco's getting hired again, but over in Mysteries."

"Harry!"

"What!"

He pulled the blankets down and sat up all at once, face to face with a peeved Ron, both of them puffing angry breaths. "It's—I wanted to do it! Don't give me a hard time, okay? I'm trying. This is me really, _really_ trying not to be stupid about things.”

“By going and getting your secret boyfriend who broke up with you on a _lark_ and still hasn’t spoken to you in two weeks a plush job, by negotiating what is effectively blackmail with the Minister of Magic.” Ron's self-satisfied look was only outdone by his tone.

“It’s only been two weeks if you don’t count—“

“The ill-informed shagging, yes, how could we forget that. Oh! And the silence that’s followed it.” Ron’s words landed and lodged deeper into his skin than Harry let on. It had hurt doubly to still feel the twinge of Draco having been inside his body when he sat astride his broom that morning and not a word in the interim. The words _fucked and chucked_ were the latest mantra to push into his thoughts, one that he was doing his level best to ignore.

"It’s been two days, he’s got no work to speak of, and it’s not as though he’s on holiday to Antarctica. You’ve got mobiles, and he hasn’t even called. Or the—what is it, letters without an owl, it's, fuck it starts with an 's'"

"SMS—just call it texting," Harry grumbled, and Ron snapped his fingers as though he'd been the one to remember.

"Exactly, texting, thank you—he hasn't even texted you.”

“It’s—I’m sure it’s more complicated than it seems, and I do not appreciate your tone.” Harry snipped. “I’m not loving this whole setup where I share what’s going on, and you whinge at me about it.”

Harry’s own whingeing was of no use—he couldn’t whine his way out of conversations about Draco anymore. Ron gave him a solemn look, which didn’t mean anything good these days.

“It’s not looking good, mate. The way he’s being, it’s irrational. And the way you’re being…” He trailed a finger over the worn check pattern of the old flannel sheets, eyes flicking up to Harry and away again, worried about how his sentence would land. “Don’t make me say the word. It'll make Hermione _appear_ ," he whispered, eyeing the door.

 _Co-dependent_. Just thinking it made Harry’s mouth pucker like he’d been sucking on a lemon. Ever since his therapist had first introduced the concept to him the week before it had become a thorn in his side, and lucky for him, Hermione read its definition only a few days later. He hated it because it confused him. It implied that both parties in what they thought was a charming relationship could, in fact, be wrong. It turned acts of devotion into the pitiful return of a beaten dog, offering itself up for its latest lashing.

“Yeah, well, the situation we’re in is irrational.” 

Harry dropped his hands into the coverlet, defeated by the way the conversation was going. “Anyway, a court case would be long and ugly and dumb, and I probably wouldn't have won anything in the end, so what’s the harm?"

"You _know_ that's not the part I'm concerned about." Ron mashed his lips together into a line, poked a finger into a hole in the coverlet, then pulled it back out. "Don't go sacrificing yourself for someone who isn't looking to be saved, alright?"

Harry melted into the bed, tossing his glasses to the side and pulling a pillow over his head.

"Can we please not talk about it? I did it, it's done, end of story."

"Hopeless," Ron said, catching him with a single, vehement poke to his midriff before he got up and left the room, sighing all the while. “Selfless, and if you asked Gin about it she’d probably say it’s romantic or some tripe, but it’s utterly _hopeless_ , I'm telling you."

Harry waited until Ron's footsteps thudded down the stairs before he slipped the pillow from his head and tugged the tin close. Sure, biscuits would leave crumbs absolutely everywhere, but he was both happy and sad, and it was Christmas, and he was alone, so fuck it, he was going to eat crumbly things in bed if he wanted to.

"Lunch is in five minutes!" George's voice bellowed up the stairs, an absolutely unnecessary _Sonorus_ charm lending it a booming quality that shook the dust from the rafters. Harry groaned, stuffing another wonderful little birds nest biscuit into his mouth.

"Happy Christmas, Draco," he mumbled around the mouthful of shaved coconut and too-sweet-chocolate, one finger poking open the mailer to stuff the letter back inside when he noticed a second note within it.

He shook it free and sat up, brushing the last of the greasy crumbs into his jeans. The note was just that—little more than a notecard—and the writing was familiar, though not nearly so elegant as the last time he'd received one. His heart raced to read the script, but as he forced little bites down at lunch, he found the sparse words weren't nearly enough to chew on, no matter how many times he turned them over in his mind.

_I'm sorry that I can't right now, but soon_

_I hope that I will._

_This isn't good enough, I know._

_It will be better when I can._

_Take care of yourself,_

_D._

* * *

Christmas with the Weasley's was one of the few traditions in Harry's life unfettered by painful memories. He didn't take this for granted—if anything he held it as sacred above all else; certainly above his birthday (which, who cared? so what, he'd been born); above the joy that others found in New Year's Eve, a night that he'd still, somehow never capped off with a kiss to the one he loved. But even with this privileging of Christmas in his mind, he hadn't realized how badly he would need to be surrounded by the people he loved and who loved him until Christmas eve came and went, and the evening's post was delivered, nary a letter or note for him, and the hollow feeling of abandonment slammed into him like a lorry with its brakes cut. He’d been hit by a real one before, so he should know what that kind of damage felt like.

The extended Weasley clan was spread across three rooms—the studious were in the kitchen, watching over the washing and drying charms, laughing over shared mugs of mead that Bill had brought with him, while Molly and the older generation of Weasleys and Prewetts still sat around the kitchen table, sneaking one more bite of gingerbread cake onto their dessert plates, Arthur pouring one more tipple of Firewhisky into the assorted glasses on the tabletop; and the younger set had retired to the sitting room, children at play with all manner of assorted Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes under the heavily-lidded eyes of their parents, the childless at play with their own games—sneaking out for puffs of gillyweed-tinged rolled spliffs, taking up and abandoning card games on a whim. Harry hadn't realized he'd been staring at Neville and Ginny tucked together on the couch, an enchanted map of Europe spread across their laps as they charted their dream vacation for next summer—the gift he'd gotten them, after their conversation in Flourish & Blotts those months ago—and he was struck by a loneliness so deep that he thought he might start crying right there, where he sat.

"Too warm," he mumbled, springing to his feet, desperate to get away from the suddenly too-stuffy air of the room, "got to change out of this jumper. I'll be back," he said to no one in particular, making a bee-line for the door, and then a run for his room.

He shut the door carefully in his hinges and took in a great, deep breath, grateful for the cool air of the bedroom on his flushed cheeks. He ripped the jumper from his head and threw it onto the bed, panting in little breaths as the surge of emotion overwhelmed him.

"Don't," he viciously whispered to the empty space, "don't do it. Don't you start."

If someone had asked him earlier in the day if he expected a letter from Draco, he would have told the truth—he wasn't sure. And he'd done a valiant job in not fixating on whether or not he'd receive a response. But there was something of finality to this silence, on this, the day after he'd shown his hand. It was now Draco who held all the cards—he could go to the press with Harry's letters, his naughty, hand-written notes, asking, _begging_ Draco for comfort, for normalcy.

 _Love, Harry_. He'd never signed a letter with that word before. He'd imagined while writing it what a release it would be to say it. To see Draco and to let the words fall from him—they felt so big, so heavy, that it would be a wonderful surrender to set them free. He still slept with Draco's t-shirt clenched in his hands and would need to burn the thing now, the bit of fabric he'd bunched up and practised saying the words into, so he'd be ready to say them aloud.

 _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ whispered a thousand times into the air of Grimmauld place. _I love you,_ running through his mind each day he'd waited for the owls of the day to come, very carefully arranging his features and staying busy, oh so very careful not to ask if there was any mail for him.

And it had all been for nought. Here he was, just as he'd always thought he'd end up, alone again. Draco so close—it was only a jump to Wiltshire or a portkey to his flat. A call away. One, single letter that gave him something more than the vague sign off to take care of himself.

 _Alone's how you're meant to be_. The voice in his head was all the more painful to hear now that he'd had something of a reprieve from it. Blind, willful hope had been keeping him afloat, and now that was gone, and he was empty, washed out. _It's what you deserve. It's easier this way, anyhow. Alone is good for you. You just need to get used to it again. It isn't so bad, really. You can't miss what you've never had—no more falling in love means no more having your heart broken_.

He sat on the bed and ran nervous fingers through his hair, over and over, the scratch at his scalp good but not-quite-as-good as when Draco would do it for him. When he used to pet him, and press kisses into his skin, and narrate all the things he would do to and for him—Harry knew now that he needed to re-write those memories. _Why should you want to be treated like a dog? It's the want of a broken person, to be someone else's pet. He probably never thought you good enough—not really._ As far as self-soothing went, it wasn't enough, but it was all he had, and he did it while hating that he needed it.

He hated crying, he reminded himself. He'd gone soft, and started to let himself feel all his feelings, and for what? It had weakened him, was all. He was weaker now—he hadn't used to hurt like this. This kind of pain—that of missing someone not because they were gone, that final kind of gone, but because they didn't want you anymore—this was a pain he hadn't known before Draco, and inoculation against it was simple.

_He said he'd never hurt you, and you should have known better. You used to know better, but you can learn from this mistake. You won't make the same mistake twice. He lied. People lie. People leave you. That's how it goes, and it's okay. You're made to be left—you're made to take it. This is how you're strong, strong enough to go it alone._

His breathing slowed, gradually, and as a final test, he summoned the weekend duffle bag he'd packed. Commercially produced vials of Dreamless Sleep tinkled against one another—he’d been taking full doses, lately, to combat the torrent of Draco-related nightmares, couldn’t risk waking the entire Weasley clan with his terrors—but he ignored those as he rummaged through it, pulling out the brown paper bag he'd refused to open early.

It was uncomfortable, pulling the items from the bag out, but he managed it. It was good practice to face the things that reminded him of Draco in private, to school his features. No tears—no more tears. He wouldn't allow it anymore. He wouldn't give him that anymore.

The items in the bag were simple and not yet properly wrapped. No receipt, though Harry could tell by their weight and finishing that they weren't cheaply made.

An inkwell of crystal glass and a phial of ink accompanied both a quill and a biro. The quill was crafted from a small black feather, like that of a crow, and the case of the biro was silver, just as cold as the snitch Harry had been practising with that morning. He set them aside and cracked open what he assumed to be a book, though he found it strangely empty, the creamy pages blank as he flipped through it.

Opening the front cover, his breath caught in his throat. _The Unofficial Autobiography of Harry Potter_ was written there in the firm, swooping script Harry would recognize anywhere, and remembering their candlelit conversations, he covered his mouth to hide the smile that spread on his lips. Running fingertips over the words, he could have sworn that the ink felt warm, enchanted even—like his skin recognized Draco's magical signature. It soothed him either way, even if he wished it didn't.

"It’s annoying, how good you are at gifts," he whispered and was startled into dropping the book when fresh black strokes appeared under the place where his fingers were tenderly stroking the page. He picked it up by its edges, sceptical of it, knowing that he should probably slam it shut and walk away from it as fast as he could, but he couldn't. Wouldn't—would always, always move closer when Draco was involved, forever curious about why and what and how he did anything.

 _How was your day?_ The journal asked him, words appearing as a heading at the top of the page. Likely not sentient, though the script was absolutely Draco's. The prompt didn't fade, and though Harry knew he shouldn't, he picked up the biro and scribbled a response just underneath.

 _Who are you_? He barely had to wait for an answer to appear, the words swimming into view all together rather than written one letter at a time.

_I'm Draco's enchantment of the diary, you inquisitive sod. Now, please answer the question at hand._

He smiled down at the sass on the page. _It is you_ , he thought, _only a piece, only one tiny, little piece. But it's you, that's in this gift. That makes it special_. He picked up the pen again and scratched in a fresh answer if only to be sure that he wasn't being played by the genuine Draco on the other end of the magically appearing messages.

_It was good until I realized how lonely it is without you. So now, it's a bit shit._

The diary took little time in responding.

_That's no good, feeling lonely. What could you do to feel less lonely? Perhaps you could join a club. Or start a club. Does that interest you? If not, I'm charmed to have lots of other ideas._

Harry was ready with another answer, but stopped himself and shut it firmly.

"It's not him," he said forcefully. "It's a gift, and an enchantment, but it's not him. Not really."

It was a gift he found astonishingly thoughtful in its execution—a way for Harry to work through what he enjoyed, needed and wanted, and to help direct him to seek out those experiences. A way for Draco to help guide him towards what he wanted to _do_ with his life, without explicitly doing so.

Harry gulped at the feeling in his throat, replacing the items in the bag and it was as he was about to slide the diary in as well that a knock came at the door, the familiar mop of red hair with an unfamiliar pair of blue eyes peeking through the space between the door and jamb.

"Charlie," Harry breathed, "what's brought you up here?"

"You seemed a bit, uh, flustered when you left. Just wanted to check to see that everything was alright?"

Harry thought a _Lumos_ into being, realizing how strange it probably was to be found sitting in the dark, clutching a book. He rubbed its cover of stretched black leather under a thumb, contemplating an answer that didn't sound insane.

"It's alright," Charlie said, an eyebrow raised and his lips mashed to the side, the international Weasley sign for _we don't have to talk about it_. He absently scratched at the long burn down his forearm, the skin there shiny and hairless as it had been since Harry had first met him. "Ron told me about your, uh. Troubles. Figured it might be good to have someone other than himself in charge of nattering your ear off about whether you were okay or not."

In response, Harry pushed the diary under his pillow instead of inside the bag and stood up from the lumpen bed.

"Smart, considering he's probably already snoring on the sofa, and I've probably got hours of bellyaching to do before I get to sleep tonight."

"You're hardly bellyaching, Harry," Charlie said. Harry shrugged, not sure what to say. He'd always thought of Charlie and Bill as so much older than him, and now at twenty-three, and Charlie only a little over thirty, it seemed strange to be able to speak to one another as fellow adults. He still felt like a child in so many ways, though it was a skin that no longer fit comfortably.

"You're giving a very impressively stoic, stiff-upper-lip for someone who's just been broken up with if you ask me." It was all Harry could do to shrug again, and Charlie raised a brow at him, the one that was cut in half by a freshly healing scar, ragged and brown. "You know. Considering you haven't said a single word about it at all."

"Most people didn't know I was dating, to begin with so..." He trailed off, scratched at the back of his head, desperate for a change of topic.

"Are you alright, really? It's okay to you know," he puffed out a breath, and lowered his breath, "miss him. Even if whoever he is, is a wanker."

Harry looked at him, his thickly freckled face, and felt the hollowness like there was hole burrowed directly through his torso. It was a wonder that nobody else could see it when he felt it so plainly.

"Not really," he said with a self-deprecating smile, heart thumping in ribs that felt like popsicle sticks, "but I'm also not ready to talk about it, I don't think."

"Alright, well. There's a cake for that. Cake's great for that, I'll have you know." He nodded towards the staircase, and Harry followed him out, loafing down the stairs until they'd nearly re-entered the kitchen.

"Charlie," he said suddenly, and Charlie turned, an expectant look on his face.

"With burns and scars and stuff," Harry started, not sure how the sentence would end, "you must know—have you ever found salves that are good for them? That work, you know?"

"Work for what?" He asked nonchalantly, smiling sweetly at his mother from across the room to placate her as he levitated a tray of baked goods from its place of prominence between her and the older Prewett women over to the countertops where he and Harry ended up, along with fresh plates for the two of them. He started carving and serving without asking Harry if the portions were appropriate—it seemed that Charlie had inherited his mother's belief that food could cure most things, heartbreak included.

Harry thought about it, of the times Draco recoiled from his touch with a hiss or when an unknown strain drained from him when he sat in the bath, submerging the waxy skin of his arm in hot water after a long day of working with his hands and forcing those tendons to flex and stretch. He was about to say _nerve damage, for pain,_ and then he stopped himself.

"For...well, for curse scars. Not burns, necessarily. I've just got—I've got a lot of them, and I've never given the creams and stuff a chance to work. To—well not to heal them, I know I've got them forever—but I've heard some stuff can help make them recede, or itch less, or hurt less. I've never bothered to try anything before."

"Oh yeah, totally," he said, nodding as he licked errant cheese cream icing from his thumb. "I can write up a list. I've tried everything under the sun—whatever you do, do _not_ bother paying for anything by that hack Graves over in Switzerland. The stuff is rubbish. Now what you should start with—"

And Harry took his plate of cake and ate one forkful after another, and then started in on blackberry pie. He listened to Charlie regale him with what to use where, and how often, and for how long, and over tea, they chatted on, and though the hole was still there, and all the cake in the world wouldn't fill it, a certain gnawing pain within Harry was satiated. That he could find solace in others, in the ways that he could stand to accept, and that he wasn't beyond repair.

"They're therapies, not cures," Charlie said at one point, and Harry felt that he wasn't talking about creams any longer. He held his eyes, his blue ones deadly serious. "There isn't a scar in the world that can't be made better if you work at it, and if you want to heal it. And it might never go away totally, but there's always a way to rehabilitate it. Yeah?"

"Yeah," Harry said, sinking into his seat. "Yeah, I think I'm ready for that."

* * *

The new year arrived alternately grim and bright. Harry was up at the crack of dawn and the next thing he knew his trainers were slapping on wet pavement, the first time in years that he had woken up after a night of fireworks and celebrations not only not still drunk, but without the sluggish pull of a hangover glueing him to his bed.

The night had been unusually cold, enough that the usual drizzling rain had fallen instead as wet snow. Sparrows startled dumps of it from the outstretched branches of trees and mounds of it hugged the edges of bricks like cold porridge, the city slowly turning from white to beige to dirty brown as cars kicked it up, mixing it with gravel and dirt.

Breaths heaved from him as he pushed forward, lungs first on fire and then settling into a manageable ache. He ripped the cap from his head and tucked it into a bum bag, thrilled that his sartorial choices for running outfits were no longer finding their way in magical magazines or news shows.

A wind was picking up, moving tufts of clouds along at a pace to rival his own, and on occasion, the sun broke through and touched his skin, a warm kiss. He dashed across streets typically bustling with traffic, now virtually empty, tin cans and little bits of gold and silver flecks and streamers littering his path. He wasn't on his usual route but knew that he needed to run until he hit the point that his mind went something close to blank, and lately, it was taking longer and longer to get there.

He was trying to outrun himself, he knew. The early morning was the hardest time, the time of day when his brain favoured whirling fast, faster, fastest. Grimmauld was orderly and neat, and by all accounts now very beautiful, and belied how scrambled he still felt inside sometimes. After his daily run or workout, after a hearty meal at the newly installed breakfast nook overlooking the street, after he flipped through the paper ensconced in the sitting room, warm and satiated and by all means at a place in his life where he should be very happy, that's when Harry started to question things. The _should_ bothered him.

He had outstanding friends. In the Weasley's a family that loved him, and checked in on him. In his Healer, Martin, he had someone to confide the darker parts to. He was young and healthy, had a fortune in his coffers, a heritage home newly decorated, something to be proud of as _his_ , and his name in good standing. He had projects that were the bricks to fill his time, and hobbies to putty in the cracks left over. And yet.

Harry ran downhill, grateful all at once for how easy it felt while knowing full-well how sore his quadriceps would be the next day. He was pushing too hard lately, overcompensating. On more than one occasion, he had to take a break while climbing the stairs to his bedroom at night—too sore to continue, too proud to crawl.

The wind was picking up and stung his cheeks as it whipped tiny ice crystals into his face, and still, he ran. Where he had no clue. He passed the Hard Rock Cafe, avoiding creamsicle orange piles of sick from some early-morning reveller that dotted the path, crossed the street and passed Wellington Arch. He'd rarely spent any time in the area, knew that by the way it felt like knives were slashing up his insides and the wobbly feeling in his legs that he'd soon have to stop an Apparate home—he didn't stand of chance of running back.

Home was safe, but it was also a trap, and an easy one to fall into. Victoria gifted him a laptop for Christmas, pre-doused in the potion to keep it from dying a similar death to his first one— _Muggles do a magical mail all their own, now. Eclectic mail, they call it—_ and he'd had it hooked up to the internet, and it took about an hour before he realized how easily he could connect with Muggles the world over to chat, and much more than chat, to wank to, or with, or about. It was difficult to comprehend how many hours he'd spent hopping from one website to another, first chatting with real people, and in wonder at how that worked, and then searching for substitutes. For moving images of men doing things he'd never considered, never _dreamt_ of. Looking, searching for a facsimile of the blond he wanted. Examining their mouths, clicking, clicking, clicking in hopes of finding someone with a sharp little snaggletooth. Pausing videos mid-frame to judge the tone and cut and quality of their hair.

They were wrong; they were always going to _be_ wrong, and he knew it, because Draco wasn't replaceable. Not that this realization stopped Harry from losing time to looking, and to wanking with the voracity he’d skipped over during his teen years, often looking up and being surprised that the sun had gone down, hours simply gone, sacrificed to the search.

Harry neared collapse and slowed outside a Pret. He thought about grabbing something with bacon in, but knew that he had brunch plans within the hour and should save his hunger for that, and then he realized that it wasn't just a Pret, but one he recognized. He bent over, hands on knees and heaved breaths, knowing that when he looked down the street, he'd recognize the Japanese restaurant on the corner, and knew exactly where the nearest post box was because he'd made it all the way to Chelsea, idiot he was and was around the block from Draco's place.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Harry directed the question to the puddle beneath his feet, cold quickly seeping into him as his sweat rapidly cooled. He pushed up to stand and caught his breath, looking at the alley that he knew would lead him to the back of Draco's building.

And then what? What would that get him?

The last things he'd received from Draco were that goodbye fuck and his _please_ as he begged Harry to leave. That, and his Christmas gifts—a cryptic note with no end date in sight, and an enchanted diary that Harry felt guilty about using, was still keeping from Martin. He pulled it out in the evening and lost time to it too, confident that he knew he wasn't talking to Draco, not really, but satiated in the book's quick wit, smiling down on the words that appeared on the pages. It wasn't enough, but it helped.

He couldn't be sure, but he'd started receiving calls from an unknown number, though the line was always dead by the time he lifted his mobile to his ear.

"You should have that looked into," Ron said with a wary look when it happened over brunch that day.

"'S nothing," Harry shrugged it off, snapping his mobile shut, though his heart always beat faster at the dial tone, something that he wished wouldn't happen, but secretly liked.

"Maybe someone's obsessed with hearing you say hullo," Parvati mused. "Maybe it's a kink."

"Maybe it's Tom," Luna said airily. Harry rolled his eyes.

"Maybe it's Mal—" Neville started.

"Don't." Harry snapped. Everyone stopped fidgeting, and he had to break the moment, reaching for the pitcher of freshly squeezed juice and refilling all the glasses in sight. Neville hesitantly grabbed a roll from a shared plate as the tension dissipated. "Please, let's not. It's not a big deal, and besides—it's not his number. Can we drop it?"

Hermione rubbed his shoulder, and the contrite looks he received when he looked around the table let him know that his friends felt sorry for him, rather than peeved at his outburst. He didn't love that they all knew about Draco—now that Pansy and Luna were joined at the hip, it was the only way to organize outings without it becoming awkward when she invited Draco along, though he hadn't been seen even by her in a month. But it did, in a way, make things easier.

"Course," Hermione said, breaking the yolk of her egg with a butter knife and then quickly pushing the plate away. Harry raised an eyebrow at her as he brought a bite of rocket and eggs to his own mouth, not-so-secretly amused at how green she'd gone all of a sudden.

"I don't know about all of you, but my hangover potion is doing _nothing_ for my nausea," she said, covering her eyes with a hand. "And the lighting in here leaves something to be desired."

"Oh, here. I've brought some of my favourite elixirs, hold on," said Luna, rummaging in her purse, and the conversation drifted to films they could watch without really watching while piled on her couch that afternoon, and what to do about Dean's upcoming birthday, and all the wonderfully mundane topics that held Harry's attention for seconds, sometimes minutes, before his mind irretrievably drifted back to Draco. Wondering what he was doing, and with whom he'd shared a kiss at midnight. At what could have been, and why it wasn't.

Harry sighed, and tried to focus without faking it, tried to only smile when he felt like it. The days of the new year soon bled into one another, and he tried to keep from clicking, clicking, clicking through forums, searching for the smile that would be a replacement. The hollowing in him hadn't shrunk—it was a tunnel that an arm could pass through, from front to back. He got more calls from the unknown number, sometimes even heard a breath on the other line before the _click—_ and then the line went dead, and his heart would sink again. So he clicked, and clicked, and clicked, and eventually gave in to temptation and set up a meeting with someone who described themselves just the way he wanted— _21, twink, slim, blond—_ and met them at a place called Nicholson's, where he wore a suit to fit in. He bought him a glass of whatever wine he wanted—the second most expensive white on the menu, and Harry didn't care, just thought it was interesting, this test that he'd clearly passed—and did his best to tamp down his disappointment that he seemed little more than a boy. The things he wanted to talk about—bands on the radio, and if he'd been to the new superclub, and whether or not he ever hung out at Hampstead Heath, and which gym he went to—the packaging was technically right. Still, the substance was lacking, but what was it he'd been looking for other than the packaging in the first place?

They kissed in the loos and when he, Oliver, when he reached for Harry's fly, Harry pushed his hands away, because the feeling was off. But he didn't want to disappoint, asked if he had a flat they could go to instead and Oliver had given him a cheeky yes and brought him back to the place he shared with two other men, themselves no more than boys, both of whom eyed Harry hungrily, eyes heavily lidded from the joint they were sharing over a plate of nachos in their tiny kitchen.

"Here?" Oliver asked him, gesturing to his mattress on the floor, and Harry had said "Sure," and let himself be kissed until he realized that Oliver wanted him to do the kissing, to take the lead, so he did. Oliver pulled the string on the single lamp in the room to turn it off, and with only the scraggly light from the nearly-full moon coming in through the window, he was passable. Close enough, even though his hair was dyed, more yellow than white, and he was softer, thin but without all the muscles Harry had become accustomed.

"Like this?" Oliver asked, laying on his bed, and Harry shook his head.

"I'm not going to fuck you," he said, "but I'll get you off."

Oliver barely shrugged, mouth held ajar as his breath came in soft pants. He was pretty in his own way, though he was emulating someone else, the looks of other people, the celebrities he had plastered on his wall. Members of boy bands and the personalities from American television shows that Harry didn't recognize.

"You can do whatever you want to me, James," he said, and Harry took to his knees at the bottom of the mattress and brought him off in a few short minutes with his mouth, one hand massaging the inside of his thigh. He came loudly, and his spunk didn't taste like much of anything at all, thin and hot in his mouth. Harry rolled to lay beside him, and Oliver licked his lips and descended on him much the same way, and when Harry closed his eyes and found a grip, firmly, not the way he'd ever dared to with Draco's fine hair, it was enough. Yes, he pretended he was someone else, and no, Oliver's tongue did not have the finesse of his previous lover, but a mouth was still a mouth. He was very, very careful that even as he made the shape of the name _Draco_ with his lips that he made no sound when he did it because it wouldn't be kind to hurt Oliver's feelings any more than he had to, and it had been a long time since he'd had a warm set of hands on his body or an eagerly sucking mouth wrapped around his cock and he came too, easily, without fuss.

Harry dressed slowly; he didn't have anywhere to be. When they said goodbye, Oliver told him he was welcome over any time—to find him on the chat board, or to text him.

"Anytime you like," he said. "Ciao," he added with a wink as he closed the door, trying on some other personality, something more worldly than he was, and Harry smiled, not enchanted but amused, unsure if he'd want Oliver again, or some other replacement, or if perhaps if what he wanted was substance, if he shouldn't start looking for that instead.

He walked home under the bright light of the moon, thankful for once to not feel much of anything at all. The loneliness was there, but not like it had been before Draco. The wound was closing, stitching back together again, and though what he'd found were only bandages to hold the broken parts together, he wondered if the wound closed when, if ever, he'd be ready to open himself up to being wounded again by someone new.

* * *

**Wednesday, January 7, 2004**

It being Dean's birthday, he got to pick the club they went to. And it being Dean, the club ended up being an illegal rave at a place they had to enter through the alley to get into, navigating a thick crowd of smoking revellers only to have the word _Fortune_ stamped on their wrists, with warm beers in aluminium cans immediate finding their way into everyone's hands but Harry. Because Harry was about to avoid the attempts of his friends to drag him onto the dance-floor for as long as he could stand, dead sober because Harry had decided that he was a good friend and that this was the sort of things friends did for one another.

"You're a great mate," Dean said, slapping him on the back with one hand while spilling a bit of Carlsburg onto the concrete floors with the other.

"Nah," Harry, knocked their shoulders together, "it's fun to try new things. I'm glad you picked this place."

Dean smiled and quickly fell into a friendly yelling match, a large group of his J-school friends having appeared from the glowing green mist to their right, and Harry took the chance of no one paying much attention to him to find a spot along the wall to lean on. He slotted in easily between a set of pipes running up to the warehouse ceiling and the table for the bar, just a few feet back from the dance circle that Pansy and Luna had established around their purses and jackets mashed into a pile on the floor. Harry leaned, a bottle of water in one hand and a pack of gum in his pocket, ready to watch out over his friends for as long as they needed. Half of them were peaking on ecstasy, the other half rightly demolished by booze and hilly weed and whatever mushrooms Luna had sprinkled into their palms a few hours back, and he found it interesting how much less fun being black-out seemed was when one was the sober person surrounded by drunks. He'd peeled Pansy's tentacle arms from his neck a dozen times over the course of the evening—she got handsy when drunk, and quickly—her hands constantly finding his hair or glasses or something to touch and comment on, or, her preferred reason for touching something while inebriated —to steal it and add it to her own outfit. Even now she wore the necklace that Hermione had started the night with, and Luna's white denim skirt over her leggings, though neither Hermione nor Luna seemed to miss the items.

They were happy, and he was steady. Not thrilled to be in the oppressively hot and dangerously dark space of a clandestine after-hours club, and certainly not euphoric, the way some of them were, drugs zinging through their blood, turning them alternatively into hyper-sexual or emotionally open versions of themselves—but steady. On an even keel, and plenty fine with being able to find this one's wallet or locate that one's significant other, or be the shoulder to cry on as they spilt every secret they'd ever been entrusted with at school, or light their cigarettes when their thumbs no longer seemed to work on their lighters. It felt nice to be needed, to be able to contribute to the fun the role of babysitter, and so he babysat from his vantage point on the wall, and let the music wash over him.

That, and he watched. It took some getting used to the pulsing coloured lights that washed over the crowd, but his eyes soon adjusted to the din and there was plenty to look at. That, and he garnered his fair share of looks from fellow club patrons, a few of which he indulged in moments of _what if?_ or _why not?_ in his mind, though his demure smile and a subtle shake of his head _no_ let men and women alike know that no, he really wasn't interested, and their eyes moved on easily to more amenable targets.

The hours passed suspiciously quickly, two bleeding into three in the morning, and it was shortly after a team meeting where it was decided that they had thirty more minutes of dancing before Hermione _had_ to have a donair in her hand or she would starve to death, that both Harry and Pansy saw the unmistakable pink head of Draco Malfoy in the crowd.

"Bugger," Pansy frowned as they watched him walk from the main room of the warehouse in the room off to the side room, space where black and white films were projected onto the walls, couches set up for ravers to lounge on while sticking their tongues as far down their newly found partner's throats as they could manage. "The fucker _said_ he was staying in tonight."

Harry froze in position, holding Pansy's overlarge purse open for her as she scrounged around in it for what, he wasn't sure. _Probably the clove cigarettes she's holding in her other hand,_ he thought, and with the thought, he snorted. Pansy, assuming he was laughing at her comments, stopped her scrounging a moment and brought the hand up to pat his cheek.

"That's the spirit, love," she said, eyes creased into tiny half-moons, so thrilled she seemed at Harry's ability to take seeing Draco lightly. "He's just a fucker, anyway. A shitty, no-good fucker who lies to his _friends_ to avoid answering their _questions_ and _where ARE my fucking cigarettes_!"

"Here," Harry snapped a hand out to grab them from her, holding them in front of her now squealing face. This kept her from stealing his glasses, the true reason she'd started patting his face, and placated her from the impending meltdown she'd been facing.

"He's still not talking to you?" he asked. She rolled her eyes, swaying on the spot as the lighter in her grip clicked and clicked and clicked before it caught, lighting her preferred rolled incendiary.

She arched a brow at him. "He's a moody little shit to _everybody_. Never returns my calls. I think he blocked my number even.” She sniffed, eyes burning holes in the wall separating her from her friend. “I don't even want to talk to him, honestly."

Harry nodded like he believed her, which he categorically did not, and took her by the elbow to lead her back to the dance circle. He checked the time—twenty minutes before he'd start the process of trying to get them all to leave— _like herding fucking cats, that'll be_ — and decided to nip out to the alley for a slash in the cold rather than brave the line for the loos, which snaked down one wall and up another, and hadn't appeared to have moved at all in the last hour.

The twin experiences of sudden quiet and cold were the perfect antidote to the incessant bass-line and wet air inside the warehouse. Harry took a moment to stretch his neck back and look up to the sky, expecting stars and getting a wall of an orange glow instead, but that was fine. It was all fine; he was fine, he wasn’t going to spiral, was going to continue to focus on the task at hand, concentrating on his friends, yes, he'd just jog over behind that dumpster and be back before anyone had even noticed that he'd been gone, and—

"Draco."

"Harry."

Rounding the corner, they nearly ran directly into one another, and Harry stepped back with his hands raised, overwhelmed all at once by Draco's smell, that blend of scents that would have a hold on him for the rest of his life. His stomach clenched, but the ache was low: manageable.

"I was just," he gestured at the dumpster beyond them, and Draco turned back to look at it. Harry could feel hole through his middle, which had healed over with a thin layer of something—webbed skin, maybe, or a gelatinous membrane—that hole opened right back up, and a raw pain he thought he’d gotten over weeks before tore through him anew. He had to catch his breath, unsure of what to say next, or if the words would come out right. Here was Draco, in the flesh, and he was categorically not prepared for what to do next.

"Yeah, of course. It's taken, currently," Draco mumbled, watching as another bloke sidled up behind it, piss joining the stream trickling down the curve of the pavement into the grate. The pink had nearly washed free from his hair, only a peachy-hue remaining, stronger in the tips than at the roots. He chewed his lip, staring at the dumpster like it was something of interest, held in profile to Harry.

Harry bit back the urge to ask if he was alright. _He's fine. He's an adult; he's doing what he wants, and what he wants no longer appears to include you_. He wore the bomber jacket he'd worn that first time they'd met on purpose, at the café. A chunky silver chain choker was layered over the thin black turtleneck hugging his neck, one stud earring and one hoop in his ears. He looked prickly, radiated _don't touch me_ energy all the way down to his steel-toed boots, and Harry swallowed the urge to do just that, knowing that to reach out and do so would be to fulfil the pattern where Draco could do anything, and Harry would follow, follow him into that darkness.

When he turned back and looked at him, Harry realized how bleary his eyes were. Unfocused, seeing not Harry but through him, to the overcast night. That though he didn't sway precipitously the way Pansy did, that Draco was still standing there long seconds after he should have said something barbed or moved along, that he was alternatively mumbling and silent because he was drunk.

Harry's mouth opened without his permission, then, the question on his lips, but Draco spoke first. He was good at that; filling the spaces where Harry's words could have gone with his own.

"I've got to go," he said, giving a little nod to punctuate his meaning. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got—" something or someone caught his eyes over Harry’s shoulders, his eyes tightening as he squinted to make them out, “I’m just sorry. I have to go.”

"Alright," Harry said, stepping out of the way to let him by. Draco stood a moment too long, and Harry was so very close to stretching out a hand and holding him back, but instead, he closed his eyes and held them shut for ten seconds—he knew because he counted them—and listened to him walk away. Looking back, his silhouette was already gone, lost in the throng of bodies shrouded in so much black.

"Where'd you go?" Ron asked when he arrived back, and Harry shook off his look of worry with a clap to his shoulder.

"Just to slash. Ready to ship out? Has anyone lost any limbs? No? Mobiles, keys, wallets? Alright," he wrangled the most likely-looking jackets in the most likely-seeming directions, located a lost shoe for Padma, and lip-gloss of Pansy's off the floor, and had the group bundled up and completely out the door when a finger tapped him on the shoulder.

"Yeah?"

A young woman with very green hair peered up at him, eyes flicking between his scar and his eyes. He was prepared for the question— _yeah, sure I'll sign your shirt—_ but then she asked him something altogether different.

"You're a friend of Draco's, right?"

"Er—" Harry stumbled over the correct answer to the question, even as Luna tugged at his hand, her pleas for him to come _on_ , they were _starving_ barely audible to him. He shook her off and gestured at the door.

"Go ahead! I'll catch up—the spot's only a few blocks away. Dean's the leader—everyone follow Dean!"

He turned back to the woman with green hair, allowing the worry that he'd kept at bay for Luna to seep into his face and voice. "Why are you asking? Where is he?"

"I was going to ask you if—it's only, I saw you two talking, out back." Harry nodded, wanting to speed up her story, though it was clear she couldn't speak any faster if she tried. "He's just—he used to party with us, but he doesn't really anymore, and he seemed really out of it, and I thought you could get him out of here?"

She looked up at him, eyes wide with expectation, or hope, maybe, and Harry sighed deeply. It seemed that she knew who he was, and history with Draco notwithstanding, if he wasn't the one that people could come to when someone needed saving, who was he at all?

“Isn’t he with friends?”

She looked pointed a thumb over her shoulder at nothing in particular. “No one’s really _friends_ with him, like, he hasn’t been around, and they’re all leaving anyways. Forget it.” She slumped and walked away, and Harry cursed the day Draco Malfoy had been fucking born as he called out to her.

"Hey! Yeah, sure, okay. I'll—I'll find that he gets home safe." She said something to him then, something kind, but he was already walking away, eyes peeled now for those features that were so easily found in a crowd, and the crowd was thinning, and the space wasn't so big, all told. But Draco was nowhere to be found. Making a second round of the space, Harry’s annoyance melted into worry. He had to tell himself that he was surely just missing something, perhaps Draco’d put a cap on, but on a third round, having already forced his way into the loo to check for steel-toed boots poking out from under stall doors, Harry was frustratingly confident that Draco had already flown the coop, and that feeling settled in Harry's belly like a leaden weight.

"Where the fuck are you," he whispered into the air as he re-entered the night. The alley dead-ended in one direction, so he started down the other, eyes resting for seconds on the huddled groups and couples littering the streets, most of them having recently departed the club, sweat streaking down their cheeks, the majority of them no older than teenagers.

It didn’t take long to spot him. Not him, though—them, Draco with a dark-haired companion, both of them nursing pints just inside a cramped all-night restaurant. Draco’s skull was easy to make out, long body lounging in a rattan chair, his head a beacon in the sea of customers sat around them. Before Harry could think twice about it, he opened the door and joined the queue for takeaway, grateful that the wait gave him time to create his excuse for being there.

The restaurant was new, with a hip, young clientele. Harry fingered a menu barely legible under the low yellowed lighting, recognizing the words for the things filling the wraps and snacks because they were the things Luna was always foisting on him—ancient grain cookies and balsamic vinegar ice cream sandwiches; they even had the ubiquitous kale-ginger-turmeric shot. He figured a latte would suffice, however, his night turned out and even managed to put his order in for one to go before another tap came at his shoulder.

Harry turned, prepared for Draco's pinched face and not expecting the visage of his companion instead.

“Fucking rights,” the man said—it was definitely Noah, the ex—hale and hearty and sounding oh so very and abrasively American. “Aren’t you Harry Potter?”

Harry gave a clenched smile, pissed that he was a head and a half shorter than the oaf that had played with Draco’s heart for so much longer than he’d had the chance to get to know him properly.

“That's me.”

Noah held his hands up, the look of a person saying _See? I told you so!_ Though by virtue of doing it _to_ Harry, it made little sense.

"I called it! I've got a friend of yours over here—or mate, I guess, I always thought mate was weird—Drake!" He called over to Draco, who was turned in his chair, eyes half-lidded as he took the both of them in together. In other circumstances, Harry was certain that he'd be apoplectic, but the most he seemed able to conjure was a look of bored acceptance. He gave Harry a hard stare, and Harry watched the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed.

"So it is him. Hurrah," he said, turning back around in his seat. It was enough to make Harry bristle, but it was off, the whole thing was off, and now wasn’t the time to throw a fit and leave Draco alone with this man when alarm bells were going off in the back of his brain, so Harry brushed off the lukewarm greeting and gave a tight smile. Noah tilted his square jaw to his chest, sharing a private look with Harry.

"Drake's being a bit of a spoilsport. Want to join us for a pint? We just left this party, _wild,_ figured we'd try to get into Gatecrasher if we could, but it doesn't open for another half hour, and it's cold as fucking tits out there."

"Sure," Harry nodded, "sounds great. I've got some time to kill."

Noah gave a fake little bow, one arm swinging wide for Harry to walk past the low tables of late-night revellers, their tables full of cheap cups of red wine and bowls of comfort food to soak up the booze. He was older than Harry would have guessed him to be, crows feet at the corners of his eyes and his body filled out, a man in his early thirties, if Harry had to guess. The tattoo of a koi fish poked out from under the sleeve of his short-sleeve shirt—bright, splashy, expensive work. Harry wondered what in the world could be interesting to a guy a decade older than them, hanging with people in their early twenties hopped up on party drugs, but then again, he had a couple pretty decent guesses.

"Harry," Draco twisted his pint around on the paper coaster it sat on—it was still nearly full, Harry was glad to see. "I see you've met Noah."

"I did," Harry said agreeably, taking the seat that left his back open to patrons walking down the aisle, and worse, without a sightline to the windows lining the front wall or the entrance. The hairs at the back of his neck prickled, but he sat low and projected ease, accepting the latte dropped off for him in a paper cup with a smile for the server and settling in.

An awkward silence descended, made easier by the din of the place. What was there to say? Harry felt it was easier to play the role of Auror—he had to help Draco out; a civilian and Noah was the unknown player. He could act a part, remove Harry Potter, the person, from the equation.

“Your friend’s trying to convince me to join you two at someplace called Gatecrasher."

Harry watched Draco for a reaction and got nothing more than a shrug. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t look Harry in the eyes, turned his beer by ninety degrees on its coaster, again and again. Noah guffawed, stomping a foot on the floor. He was certainly attractive—broad-shouldered and well-muscled, his short black hair gelled into a simple military-style flat-top. The way he sat with his legs jutting apart, taking up as much space as he liked, his voice booming above that of the other patrons set him apart, his money and his American-in-London-ness blatantly obvious.

"Do you hear that? Drake's told me you're famous, and you don't even know what Gatecrasher is?"

Harry glanced at Draco at this last _Drake_ , surprised that it didn't even seem to rankle him. But he was drunk, it was obvious now—he appeared to be sitting still, but he kept self-correcting his posture, little micro-falls forwards and backwards.

"Excuse me," he said abruptly, directing it to Noah, not Harry, "loo." As he stood, he used Harry's shoulder to steady himself before he started to walk away, and Harry was sure that he felt a squeeze—a purposeful touch. Was he meant to follow? He couldn’t, without it being suspicious—this was a restaurant, not a busy pub, and the toilets were housed individually behind single doors. So what it signalled, he had no idea, but he knew then that he wouldn't leave, not for all the awkwardness in the world, until Draco returned and specifically told him to.

"Fucking bag of laughs tonight, isn't he?" Noah twisted his neck to watch as Draco rounded the corner to the loos. He was sweating more than the temperature of the room called for, a bead of sweat gathering at the tip of his nose. Harry concentrated on it, more disgusted than he’d usually be by this very human act.

"He seems a bit tired," Harry hedged, wondering where this tack of conversation was going.

"I mean, don't get me wrong—you're friends with him, right?" Harry swallowed, considering how much Noah knew about him; if it was as _Harry Potter, the Saviour_ or _Harry Potter, the man who briefly replaced you as Draco's fuck-buddy-cum-boyfriend_. Noah noticed the hesitation, leaned in closer. "Or did you two ever—?"

He raised an eyebrow and sipped his beer as Harry gave a tight nod. No use pretending otherwise. Noah, for one, didn't seem perturbed. Not even that—he seemed pleased at the response.

"Ah, I fucking thought so! Well then, you'll know—" He leaned in, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “it's nice when he gets so drunk that he shuts up for once, you know?"

Harry’s vision went white. It was visceral, how much hatred that statement made him feel, and also how well things clicked into place. He could see all at once why Draco would keep someone like Noah around. Someone who could so easily find his insecurities and tweeze them from him, place them under a microscope, because his insecurities were secretly some of his favourite things to be pointed out to him. Someone not so unlike Lucius in their ability to take a trait like his chatter, which Harry saw to be wonderful, an extension of his overactive and brilliant mind, and to turn it on him, to point at it and go _you just never do know when to shut up, do you?_ , because Draco was haunted by demons that said these things to him every day, and it was probably a relief when someone gave an actual voice to them.

How someone like Draco, someone he saw as stubborn and strong-willed, could be fooled by an outwardly beautiful person like this who was so very ugly inside until his will wilted away, and his stubbornness disappeared.

_Until he became pliable—remember what he said to you? "I made myself just as fuckable as you like"._

"Mmm," Harry made a sound, heart pounding in his ears. He didn't want to think of anything that might make him and Noah alike in their treatment of Draco, didn't want to question whether Draco had curbed some of his intricacies to make himself more amenable to Harry. That was the dark Voice talking, the voice Harry had worked too bloody hard to get to shut up to start listening to again now.

Magic buzzed in his fingertips, begging for release. Two women at the table next to them both giggled nervously when static electricity jumped from their fingertips to their phones, and the fuzzy hair on Harry’s forearms was standing on end with it. He couldn't move, couldn't touch anything for fear that something big would happen.

_You can't cause a scene, and you can't leave. And you will not leave Draco with him. There's no way._

Noah closed one eye, peering at Harry with the other. Joviality still pulled his facial muscles up into a loose smile, and whatever cocktail of drugs and drink he was on made him unobservant of the changes in the atmosphere. He hadn't caught on to the sourness within Harry—Harry was fairly certain that he didn't practice much empathizing.

"I mean, if you two've fucked before, we could also, you know." He pursed his lips and shrugged. Harry cocked his head and took a breath, catching sight of Draco on his way back from the loo out of the corner of his eye, his steps longer and more purposeful than it had been on his way to leave.

"Clarify for me. Just so I'm sure."

"You’re a top, right? We could, you know. Share." The smile on Noah's face turned carnal, so many polished teeth. The smile of the predator next door. "He's a pretty accommodating bottom, but you probably already knew that.” He winked, an easy smile on his lips. “And, like, he doesn’t _party_ like he used to, but I’ve convinced him that poppers don’t count.”

He flicked his eyes over to Draco nearing them, grinning at him, like Draco was a chip at the casino for him to bargain and play with, and Harry had had enough. He gave himself to the count of three to give his anger someplace to _go_ , waiting as Draco regained his seat, and leaned onto his elbows at the table, one louche hand dropping to swirl his beer. Harry, easy as could be grabbed his latte and extended his pointer finger so that it brushed the bottom of Noah's pint, and the bottom of the pint fell off as he moved to bring it up to his lips, the rush of cold ale into his lap an unpleasant surprise.

"Fuck!" He jumped up, knocking his chair back onto the floor with a clatter. "Fuck! What in the _fuck._ "

"Oh, no." Harry barely mustered the breath to speak the words. He turned to Draco and could see it—the spark of a smile, almost, almost dimpling his cheek. He turned back to the spluttering Noah and screwed up his face with as much mock concern as he could manage.

"Oops. Happens sometimes. Comes with the territory of you know," he lowered his voice and leaned in, whispering, "magic. Can't use it to clean you up though or, you know," he looked over his shoulder at the other diners, most of whom were turning back to their conversations, unimpressed and unconcerned with Noah's wet lap, "people would notice."

"What am I supposed to do?" He growled the question at Draco, as though the affront was somehow his fault. Harry plucked a single thin serviette from the silver container on the table and held it out to him.

"Might want to towel off in the loo."

Noah looked about ready to wind up and give him an earful, but seemed to think better of it and scoffed at the proffered napkin, stomping away. Harry watched the tense line of his back until he was safely out of earshot before turning back to Draco. Draco, who couldn't tear his eyes away from his retreating back, bottom lip sucked in, worry painted over his features.

"Listen," Harry started, and when Draco wouldn't snap out of it, he moved into his line of sight, forcing him to pay attention. "Draco? Are you listening?"

He nodded slowly. It was beyond strange. Harry had never seen him so totally unanchored, like driftwood, floating whatever way the waves carried him. All through the time when they were _them_ , Draco had been the strong one. It was uncanny.

"I know it's weird between us, but I need you to tell me the truth.” Draco swallowed, let the lip he’d been biting pop free. He stared into Harry’s eyes, his breathing shallow and fast, like he was ready to run, to fight, on a knifes edge. “Tell me the truth. Do you want to go home with him?"

His eyes didn't roam to the corner that Noah had disappeared around, nor to the jacket he'd left hanging on the back of his chair. He kept his eyes on Harry's and sluggishly shook his head no, and the sinking weight Harry had felt earlier got a little bit heavier.

He exhaled, tensing a fist to keep from reaching out and holding one of Draco's hands. He wanted to brush a thumb over his purpled knuckles and pull him close, but couldn't. Wouldn't overstep whatever barrier it was that had kept them apart for nearly a month.

"Alright. Let's get out of here." Harry stood and let Draco walk ahead of him, following him out the front door, not looking back to see when Noah would return and find the table abandoned.

"This way," Harry motioned across the street, and they walked side by side, quick, long strides carrying them a block left and up, and on they walked, Draco turning around every so often to check that they weren't being followed. His silence was unnerving, and once they'd cleared five blocks, Harry slowed his pace and stopped, knowing them to be around the corner of the donair spot, Dean's braying laugh audible in the cold night air.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I did that?" Harry asked. Draco stared at his feet, having seemingly lost his voice. He shrugged, and Harry wanted to shake a response out of him, to scream at him to wake up, but it was then that he remembered that he was probably just trying to keep from puking up.

He heaved a sigh, scrubbed at tired eyes. The latte had been left on the table, abandoned as little more than a prop even though Harry really could have used a shot of caffeine to his system as he contemplated what, exactly, to do next.

“Were you following us?”

Draco's question was delivered just as that—not accusatory, just wondering. He stood as still as he could in the slush of the street, head bowed low, one hand cradling his face as though holding it up.

 _Us._ The word rankled Harry. He forced himself to stare at the Draco before him, this tired, downtrodden avatar of the one he’d known, to temper his response.

_Home. You’re getting him home, that’s it, that’s all._

"I didn't catch her name, but a friend of yours—green hair—she said you didn't seem well and asked that I'd get you home safe. That's why I followed you, alright?"

Draco nodded at his feet again, hand travelling from his cheek over the crest of his ear, tucking away a phantom strand of long-gone hair, and Harry's heart warmed at the gesture. He bit back the smile that wanted to form, refused to go soft so quickly.

"All I want is to get you home. Does Noah know where you live?" Draco looked down the alley as though he’d appear there, and managed another nod. Harry walked back into his line of sight, peering around the corner and holding his hands up at shoulder height, making his body too wide to ignore. "He doesn’t know where you are, and he’s not going to do anything, okay?”

Draco nodded again, hands in his pockets, a shiver going through him. He would have ripped Harry’s bollocks from his body for babying him like this before. And now just this—empty acceptance.

Harry swallowed around a ball of worry quickly knitting itself into something with concrete edges. He didn’t have the time or space to give to why Draco was like this.

_He abandoned you. He doesn’t want you around, and he shouldn’t be around this other guy, but you can’t protect him from himself._

“Okay, well." He sighed, dropped his hands. "I can Apparate you inside yours, then, if you like. If the wards will let me in." Draco made a sound, something low in his throat that signalled that this plan wouldn't suffice. "He doesn't have a key, does he?"

"Of course not. You do, though."

Harry was surprised by his voice, glanced up but didn't catch his eye because Draco seemed fully incapable of looking elsewhere but at his shoes.

"I was just checking. Come on. How's that sound?"

"Can't," he turned, looking off into the distance, arms crossed tightly against his chest. "I cast a sobering charm on myself earlier, but it's not—I'm not totally sober."

"Draco," Harry spoke slowly, not sure he wanted to know the answer. "Are you high?"

"No, it's not _drugs_ , drugs. I—it's legal. It's for my arm." He squeezed it unconsciously, one hand tightening and creasing the fabric of his jacket over the burned wrist. He squidged his lips to the side, deeply unhappy with the words he was being forced to speak. "Sobering charms don't work with potions. I'll ralph everywhere if we Apparate."

Harry ran a hand through this hair, tousling it into a tornado of a mess, he knew. It was tacky with the product that Parvati had smudged into it, something texturizing. He hated it, desperately wanted a shower to clean it, and then remembered that he could _Scourgify_ anything, whenever he wanted and did just that. All at once, it fell back, wild curls at his scalp of the sort that his hands could happily worry. The way Draco looked at him as he did it, it was with an open longing that stole Harry’s breath a moment.

"How about a taxicab, then?" His voice wavered. It was dangerous, standing an arm's length away from him, even.

Draco slumped at the suggestion, kicking pebbles free from the pavement. "I don't like automobiles," he said in a small voice, the whine of a child, as though it were an embarrassing secret, and Harry was ready to sigh and say it didn't _matter_ that he didn't like them, it was nearly sunrise, and he was freezing, and this was as many words as they'd spoken in weeks and he couldn't stand here arguing about modes of transportation all night, but just then Draco's mobile went off in his pocket. He pulled it free, forehead wrinkling at its buzzing form, and opened it only to snap it quickly shut again.

“New phone?” Harry asked acidly. He couldn’t help it. Draco squeezed his eyes tightly shut as though expecting to be slapped, as good an answer as any.

 _Noah,_ Harry thought. Against his best efforts, he melted a bit. As angry as he was, as lonely as he'd been, his want for Draco to be happy and safe, even if it wasn't with him, still reigned paramountly.

“The last time I took a taxi, the cabbie locked all the doors and told me I could pay with my mouth, so." He washed his hands over his face, still not looking at Harry. "So, I'd rather not do that, again, thanks."

And as much as a shit he'd been to Harry, he needed a steady, helpful hand at that moment. They could do the hashing out later.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Harry said, and he meant it. Draco shrugged it off, but Harry knew that it hurt, all of the little injustices hurt, and he deserved at least to have someone acknowledge that for him. He cleared his throat and said more forcefully, "I'm really sorry that happened to you."

"Well, you know. Benefits of being me, leaving the house looking the way I do." He hacked a laugh, making it a joke, but his voice was tight, and Harry recognized that Draco at that moment was fragile. He wanted to interrogate his words—who'd told him that how he was disrespected was predicated on how he looked? Who'd been sowing these thoughts in his mind?

_But it's not for you to care anymore. Stop, Harry, you have real obligations, and they're to the people who didn't abandon you when the going got tough._

Options were fast fading, and Harry wanted to round the corner soon, rejoin his friends and end this awkward, painful nightmare that he'd landed in, and that's when it came to him.

"Well, it looks like what's going to happen is we're going to join with my crew, and I'm going to hail the Night Bus to get everyone's arse home. You can grab a kebab or something too if you want." Draco grimaced at the ground, somehow unhappy with the plan. "You look like you could use a meal, not to be rude about it," he added, and it was true. Draco was gaunt, any way one sliced it.

"Harry," Draco said, finally looking at him, "I can't—"

"You can. I'm not asking. Just—come. Pansy's over there too, you can sit with her. She'll be only too glad to chew your ear off for lying to her about your plans tonight."

Draco's look was imploring, like Harry's ask cost him more than he could afford, but Harry didn't fold under the pressure of his pleading look. It hurt his heart, sure, but this was the way he could protect Draco without giving up too much of himself. He couldn't drop everything for him at the drop of a hat anymore. Wouldn’t. He already had a horde of people waiting on him—he could add one dependent to the group, not swap one out for the other. It wasn’t Draco versus his friends and family and life anymore—but it could, at least at this moment, be both.

"It's the best plan we've got. Come on," he nodded at the lit corner, "they don't bite."

Draco mashed his lips in a line and then took a deep breath and walked shoulder to shoulder with Harry into the incandescent light. Within about twenty paces, twin yells of their names went up from the assembled crowd, Dean glowing to see Harry, and Pansy thrilled to have Draco available to dress down, thoroughly, in public.

"Don't start," Harry said warningly as he walked to the far side of the group, stealing a chip from Hermione and relishing in its hot, salty grease. Hermione did her concerned eyebrows, and Ron frowned over in Draco's direction, turning to Harry with a look that said he wouldn't take _don't_ as an answer.

"Careful there, mate," he poked Harry in the shoulder, brow furrowed. His breath was heavy with hops, but Ron could hold his drink and wasn't nearly so inebriated as most of their group. "Whatever's happening here, just—careful. Alright?"

"He's taking the Night Bus home with us, that's all. Trust me—I've got my head on straight here." Ron's eyebrows made clear that he categorically didn't trust Harry on this score, but he didn't say anything further. "He just needs to get home. That's all that's happening."

Harry gave a two-minute warning for the group to finish up their fags and grab the last of their orders of messes wrapped in wax paper and was the one to summon the bus with a flick of his wand, tugging Neville back from being flattened by it with a finger hooked into the hood of his pullover.

He stood aside to watch his friends pile in, the witch driving the vehicle hurrying them on, her frequent yells of “All aboard!” unnecessary, but useful in rousing the most exhausted from their states of falling asleep whilst standing. Draco held one of Pansy's hands and Luna the other, apparently to placate her need for touch. Harry let his eyes linger over them as they crammed in onto one of the bench seats, Draco's face turned in to listen to Pansy's sleepy ramblings, sharing worn smiles with Luna. The feeling he normally only got when he was running, like his lungs were being slashed up, came to him as the streetlight pooled on his features, and he made himself look away, fixating on the shards of a broken bottle shining green on the pavement. Harry hopped on last, the shepherd sure that all his sheep were safely on board, and stood in the aisle, holding firm to a rubber loop to keep from falling over as the bus jerked along its route.

The bus was busy for a Thursday morning, the eerie moment where those returning to bed from a night on the town collided with those early morning risers in need of transport to an international portkey location, or simply taking the bus to work—sleepy witches and wizards in their everyday robes, folding a day-old Prophet open across their faces as they sought to catch an extra wink of sleep.

The crowd dwindled, one or two of their party dropped off at a time. Harry hugged each of them goodbye, pretending not to notice Ron's eyes lingering on Draco's form as he helped Hermione down the stairs. By the end of it, only Pansy, Luna and Draco were left as they hit the familiar roads of Chelsea.

Draco flicked his eyes up to Harry as Pansy rose, still holding his hand, pulling him along with her. "This is my stop," she mumbled, squinting as though into bright light as she stumbled towards the door. Luna followed them, her pupils blown into pools of black, a permanent smile plastered on her face.

"This is my stop then, too!" she squealed. Harry closed his eyes and prayed for patience, disembarking behind the three of them.

"I'm only a few blocks away," Draco mumbled over his shoulder, easily keeping pace with Pansy, who looked like she was walking through honey. Harry stuck his hands in his pockets and shadowed the three of them, comfortable to follow.

"I'm aware," he said. "I'll get you to your door."

Draco frowned at him, clearly unhappy at the implication that he needed an escort to his own front door. In better health or happiness, or clearer of thought, he'd probably have pushed Harry on that point. Instead, he kissed each of Pansy and Luna's cheeks as they said their goodnights, the women stumbling into the front door of Pansy's flat laughing all the way.

"They'll be up through sunrise," Harry attempted to make conversation. Draco didn't respond, only zipped up his coat and crammed his hands into its too-small pockets. They started off at a brisk pace, the heels of his footstrikes clicking over the pavement as though he wore stilettos and not heavy boots.

It was minutes but felt like seconds, and suddenly they were at the brightly lit glass atrium of Draco's building. He waved his fob at the little security box, and Harry held the door for him to walk through, and Harry knew that technically, that was all that was needed of him, but just then Draco's mobile started buzzing a sharp staccato again, and without a thought, Harry followed him in.

"I can get in from here, thanks," Draco said, but there was no gusto to it. He frowned down at the device in his hand, and then looked to Harry, caught between answering with him there, or waiting for him to leave, and the feeling of being looked over, of being shunted aside finally set to boil Harry’s resentment. 

_Buck up, get what you need, and leave. You can't avoid him forever, and you can't avoid the conversation either. It's time to rip the bandage off._

"I disagree." Harry easily pulled the vibrating mobile from his hand and opened it, held the _Off_ key until it powered down. "I'll see you to your door," he said firmly, passing the mobile back and reaching around Draco’s immobile body to push the button for the elevator. Draco stared at the device, mouth ajar as the elevator's bell dinged and its doors opened on a hermetically sealed swoosh, and they stood in perfect silence in the space and walked in silence to his door.

"Do you want to come in, then?" Draco directed the question at his door as he played with his keys. Harry noticed that he was in gloves again, which was odd, for a Muggle event.

Harry took a deep breath and looked to his own hands. He had to be cautious now—to avoid letting sentimentality colour his thoughts. Clarity was required, and that meant absolutely no touching.

 _And perhaps an anti-convulsant_ , he thought, though that had been for when he worked up the courage to tell Draco how he really felt about him. It was a bit late for that—but why, then, did he still feel all the nervousness of a pre-pubescent boy?

"What would I be coming in for?"

Draco shrugged, his non-answer to everything it seemed. "Tea."

"Tea", Harry said, considering it. _Tea_ wasn't nearly enough. "Tea doesn't quite cover what I'm hoping for. There are some things that I need to hear you say. I think I'm owed that."

"You're owed a proper apology," Draco said, his voice so incredibly small. The edges of his lips turned down into a grimace—he was trying not to cry, pushing the same key around and around on the little metal loop that held it. He didn't wait for Harry's response, slid the key into the door and turned the lock, leaving it open as he walked down the darkened hallway into his flat. 

Harry stared at the keys dangling from the door and wished that he had the will to take them and place them in the bowl on the sideboard—the sideboard that Draco had fucked him into before turning around and kicking him out—and then turn around and leave. Draco's inability to say the things he needed to his face—the fact that it had taken a chance encounter to bring them to this place—it was all wrong. It wasn't the declaration of care that Harry had been waiting on, wasn't even an actual invitation inside. This wasn't Draco trying, as far as Harry was concerned, but. But.

He watched as the lights in the kitchen glowed on and shut the door behind him, locking it and throwing up a ward and a silencing charm for good measure, and dropped the keys in the bowl. It was unlike Draco not to wait and put up the wards himself, but everything about Draco seemed off. He left his trainers at the door and padded quietly down the hallway, finding Draco sat at the table, kettle already on. Usually spotless, the kitchen showed signs of the earlier events of the night—an empty green glass magnum bottle sat in the sink alongside two wine glasses, and an ashtray on the centre of the table, full to overflowing. The ripped ends of rolling papers and crumbs of weed cling to one corner of the table too, and the pull tabs from a dozen cans of beer, though the cans themselves were missing. Draco's boots were tipped on their sides, having tracked mucky slush in from outside, though the floors were far from clean to begin with. He snapped open the fasteners to his gloves and loosened them one finger at a time. Harry figured that what _tea_ really meant was _conversation_ , and so he started to speak.

"What's with the gloves?"

Draco piled them on the table, touched a fingertip to an empty black leather finger.

"He doesn't like it." Draco spoke quietly like it hurt his throat to manage much more than a whisper, and Harry had the terrible, uncharitable thought that perhaps his throat hurt from having had it fucked by someone else, the way his used to go gravelly for Draco. That maybe Noah had—

He quashed the thought, peeved with himself for thinking it.

"Noah?" He pulled out a chair to sit, to Draco's left.

Draco gave a slow nod. His right hand pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, which he removed and threw on the table. He lit one with a little Muggle lighter and pulled a drag, tugging the ashtray closer with a finger. It was like he'd forgotten that magic was an option, and it irked Harry until he realized that perhaps his magic had abandoned him as it had once before.

"What doesn't he like?"

Draco snapped his fingers to start the charm to siphon off the smoke to nothingness—finally, a little show of his abilities.

"My burn."

Acid churned in Harry's stomach—he'd been disgusted by the man already, but this was some new low. And Draco, so oddly compliant—Harry hated that he knew they'd been together one way or another since mid-December, and those feelings of betrayal and hurt and confusion came bubbling up, mixing together into a frothy, awful mix inside of him.

"What's happened, Draco? What's happening to you?"

Draco's jaw set firmly, and he looked to be on the verge of tears, swallowing them back, and he'd hardly said two words yet.

"I just—" Harry looked away from him, contemplating the hour on display on the quartz clock on the wall. "I'm so confused."

Draco sat curled into himself. Head bowed, and shoulders caved in, it was the perfect position to take a verbal beating, and Harry was so _sick_ of it.

"You had every reason to chuck me when the news came out about Justin. But that's been debunked—it was a pack of lies, and I _know_ you know that."

Draco tapped ash into the ashtray. Long seconds passed, and all he did was swallow and stare at the fucking gloves, not able or willing to look directly at Harry.

"I know," he said, finally, voice a gravelly whisper. He looked up to meet Harry's gaze, those beautiful grey eyes, unbearably tired. "I know."

Harry held his eyes, and it was an invitation for Draco to look deeper, but Draco averted his gaze instead, putting more distance between them by standing up and walking away. He poured himself water and lingered at the sink, drinking most of it down in one go. He didn't offer Harry a glass.

Harry powered on, feeling like a naughty child forced to explain himself to an adult, like he was waiting for his punishment to be doled out, only he hadn't done anything wrong. It choked him up, how much it reminded him of begging his Aunt and Uncle not to be cross with him when he was a boy.

"But if you know that there was nothing between us, then why are you still so angry with me? I just don't understand what I'm supposed to do."

Draco stared at the floor, head bowed. It was like he couldn't bear to look at Harry more than a few seconds, or—what? What would happen?

Harry didn't like that he'd put space between them, had made it _easier_ on himself, so he stood and joined him in the kitchen. From there he could see his feet, stockinged toes bunched up on the tile. He gripped the edge near the sink, white-knuckling it.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Harry said, and it contained all the hurt he'd felt and been unable to show. It was a plea, and Draco winced, even, to hear how it sounded, this raw thing between them. "It was _my_ privacy that was violated, and I haven't got a bloody chance in hell of making any of the people who did it pay for it more than they already have, and you promised—"

He had to break, wait for the wave of feeling to crest and recede. He would not break down, not here where Draco could see. When he spoke again, it was his voice that was impossibly small. "You promised you wouldn't hurt me, and you left. You left me."

The glass Draco held rattled as he put it down on the counter, a trembling starting within him. He rocked forwards, the way he used to to get his hair to cover his eyes, but none of his usual security blankets were available to comfort him anymore.

"We broke up on a farce, I admit that." He closed his eyes, pushing a long breath out. "I'm sorry, Harry. I'm so sorry."

Harry let out the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, and he wanted to let that be it. _Why can't it be so simple,_ he wondered, knowing that he was owed so much more than a simple apology. He hated seeing Draco like this—a wreck, threadbare, his very seams were visible. Harry wanted to close the gap and cling to him until the trembling stopped, but he staid fast, feet anchored to the ground as though rooted there. He could remember Draco, so many months ago, sitting on the counter, red lips twisted with worry for him. _What's gotten into you,_ he'd asked. And now Harry looked at him and wondered the same.

"You have no idea how badly I've needed to hear you say that," Harry said. A strange laugh escaped him, an incredulous sound. How _easy_ it had been, how quick, and yet it had taken so, so long to drag it from him. Draco shut his eyes, a frown pulling at his forehead like the sound hurt to hear.

"I am sorry, Harry. You didn't deserve to think that I was staying away because of him. That wasn't my intention."

"Well, I can't read your mind, Draco!" Harry's voice rose at the same time that the sudden, high whistle of the kettle pulled their attention away from each other. "You made a fool out of me, you—"

Draco remained frozen, allowing the whistling to go on and on until Harry sighed and turned away. Finishing the sentence _—you broke my heart_ — it would probably break his, and Harry wanted to break it—didn't he? Shouldn't he want to punish him?

It was the question he didn't have a clear answer to, and it was going to drive him insane, he thought, putting distance between them by walking the length of the hallway down to the guest room, practising his breath. Draco took the kettle off the heat, and the flat descended again into near silence. Harry looked into the guest room, just as neat as he'd last seen it, and then into the study, the desk unusually bare. When the tinkling of spoons on plates came from the kitchen, he took a deep breath and closed the door, making a pact with himself not to raise his voice, not to give in to the urges of rage. It was no use getting angry, and he'd be an idiot to think that fighting was going to resolve their issues.

"Then, why?" Harry asked, returning to the table. "Why did you stay away all this time? It just doesn't make sense, Draco. Make it make sense for me."

Draco moved slowly, levitating mugs, milk and cream and sugar, arranging everything precisely so on the table. In silence, all in silence, though Harry knew he was taking the time to find the right words. He placed a plate of shortbread between them, taking a bar and breaking it in two, only to crush the tip of it into crumbs on the plate.

"I tried," he said, his voice breaking on the words. _He's smoking too much, even for a wizard he's going to fuck up his lungs if he keeps on like this_. He cleared his throat, a rough, phlegmy sound, and tried again. "I wrote you the letter," he started, and Harry scoffed openly.

"What—the note?" Draco frowned at him, brows lowered with what Harry recognized as confusion, and not anger. "You call that a letter?" The calm he'd found so quickly evaporated from him, his words vicious even without raising his voice. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"And I tried. I tried to call." Draco's words were all but whispered, but Harry wouldn't let his pleas ride.

"Don't you dare start with me—you _tried_ to call. It's you, hanging up on me, isn't it?" Draco nodded, the little muscles in his face struggling to keep it together. His bottom lip trembled, and Harry didn't care, wanted to see Draco hurt the way he'd hurt for so long.

"If that's what you call trying, Draco, I don't think I want you to try. That's such utter bullshit—I've been right here!" He pressed a hand to his chest, and Draco's surface gave way and broke, a flood of emotion seeping out of him. All at once, he was crying huge, fat tears, and trying desperately not to, face pink and screwed up to try to stop it, but Harry wasn't done yet.

"I've been available all along, and you ignored every one of my attempts to talk to you. That note was a _joke_. What was I supposed to do with that?"

Draco bent in half, sobbing into cupped hands, and Harry had to wonder if he was going to continue, lower, lower still to the floor and grovel up at him from it. It seemed a distinct possibility at that moment that if Harry told him to, he would beg. The curl of Harry's lips mellowed, and he held his tongue, leaving space for Draco to explain himself.

"I'm sorry," he choked out at last, hands covering his ears, as though Harry were yelling at him, "I'm so fucking sorry. I, I, I—"

"Don't do this. Sit up. I'm here now. Try harder." Harry waited it out, biting the inside of his lip to keep from saying more. Tears would not be enough of an apology, not tonight.

Draco coughed around sobs, sniffling until he'd caught enough breath to speak again. 

"Remember when we started?" It was a question that didn't demand a response, and Draco didn't wait for one anyways. He swiped at his cheeks, tears still falling fast. "When we made up our ground rules?"

"Of course I do," Harry said. He tempered his tone to something flat, dead, to cover up how very much he did care.

Draco spoke between shaky breaths, leaving his sentences jangly, stopping and starting in fits. "I told you that I—push people away. I've been low, I've been a mess. When I left, I—" He broke off and turned to face the darkness down the hall, a hand held up so that his face was hidden from view as he schooled his hitching breaths. "I fucked up so quickly, and I would have hurt you to have come back. I'm a coward, Harry. Don't you see?"

Harry said nothing, made no sound. He wouldn't agree with Draco and let him use that as a shield. 

Draco sniffled, wiping a sleeve over his nose to keep the snot from running down his face. "Your problem is that you still think of me as a good person." He spoke like it was something he knew, and Harry was too dull to understand, like this was the fact that Harry needed to learn, "I can tell." 

"Draco," Harry said, sick of staring at the back of his head. Annoyance bristled his skin like a scratchy fabric—he'd burn a hole into his scalp through sheer force of will if he wasn't careful. "Turn and look at me when you're talking to me. Please."

He sucked in a ragged breath and complied, a tired slump to his shoulders as he pulled his feet up to the seat of his chair and wrapped his arms around bony knees, staring at Harry over their knobby tops. 

"I'm not a good person, Harry." He nodded as he said it, giving Harry a look like he was letting him in on a valuable secret. The purpled circles under his eyes were permanently wet now; his tongue darting out to lick his top lip clean. "You won't believe me, because you are good—don't interrupt, it's true that you are, you don't think it, but you are." He was all but whispering by the end of it, eyes imploring Harry to believe him. "But I'm not Harry. I don't deserve nice things."

It took everything he had not to tell him to stop saying these things, that he was incredible and whole and worthy, and not to worry—anything to stop him hurting like this. Harry pushed a thumbnail into the flesh of a pointer finger, pouring the pain he felt in his heart into that spot in his hand instead. He realized that perhaps there was truth to what Draco was saying. That somehow in his addled brain, he hadn't realized what he'd been doing. That he'd seen two paths: one, where he came back to Harry and destroyed both of them, and one where he stayed away, to save Harry the pain of the mess. To save him from _this_ , from the person Draco had become. To see him now, like this—this wasn't the Draco that Harry remembered at all. This was darkness, and emptiness and Harry was surprised at how tidy the house seemed, considering that it was the place that this version of Draco had been haunting so long.

"Why don't you deserve nice things?" Harry asked, and Draco pushed out his bottom lip, genuinely contemplating the question.

"I fuck them up. Look at what I did with you," he eyed him knowingly. "I fell into a pit, my usual pit, and it was all I could do to keep a routine. To get up, at all. Every day, to do one thing. Attempt work, or eat, or shower. It's useless trying to do anything. If I had a spine at all I'd have killed myself—I wanted to die, Harry, I wanted to shrivel up and die. It's like everything got really hard," he paused and pressed fingertips into his closed eyes, voice reedy and high. "Everything got really hard all at once. I was pretending that I had it all together when we started up, but this? This is me. And then your story came out, and I still wasn't sure if I trusted you, because, what was more likely?"

"That I was telling you the truth," Harry implored. He wiped sweating palms against the fabric on his thighs as Draco shook his head, on and on and on.

"The truth? The truth was I spent months at your beck and call. The _truth_ is that we were playing house, for a little while, but that doesn't erase most of it."

"I wasn't playing, Draco," Harry whispered.

Draco winced, sniffling something awful.

"I was your slag, coming round for months when you called for me. I thought I'd changed, but that's all I was, wasn't I?"

Harry didn't have a good answer for his behaviour during those early months and stood, needing a break. He took the opportunity to walk over to the bathroom, flicking on the light on a quick search for something useful. The face he saw reflected in the glass surprised him—black hair tumbling low on his brow and about his ears, his eyes gleaming a startling green in the midst of his pallid face, red-rimmed even if they hadn't yet spilt any tears. He looked destroyed, like he needed a day and a night of rest before the colour would seep back into his cheeks or lips.

Draco avoided looking at him as he walked back to the table.

"Here." He dropped a spare toilet roll next to Draco's plate of crumbling biscuits. "Clean yourself up. And—just breathe for a minute, alright?"

Harry sat and sipped his tea, listening as Draco blew his nose almost comically loudly, ripping off a length of sheets and folding them into a perfect square to daub at his eyes with. He whispered _thank you_ , and they sat like that for minutes until he had gotten the tears under control and managed a sip of tea, hiccoughs subsiding, fingers curling around the mug for warmth.

"I wasn't thinking straight," Draco starting speaking again suddenly. "What didn't seem likely was that you wanted only me. I always thought I was a phase, deep down. People like me for a while, and then they tire of me, and it was hard to believe that this time things were different." He took another bracing sip of tea, which did nothing to soothe his rough voice. "I've been the dirty secret more times than I can count, Harry. I thought I'd invented us, you know? It was like we were living a fantasy, the stupid fantasy of a stupid boy, and I know it sounds crazy, but I didn't want to believe that what we had was real. I'm still not sure."

"It was a bit of a fantasy," Harry said, and he registered alarm in Draco's widening eyes and touched the tabletop between them, tempered his words with a gentle smile. Draco stared at the hand, and Harry wondered if he really was high, the way he looked at it. "Not the way you're thinking. Just—we didn't exist in the real world. We were playing games while real-life happened around us."

"Have you found someone real, then?" Draco asked, and Harry had to look away. He sounded so _hopeful_ , like the answer he needed from Harry was _yes, I've found a lovely replacement for you_. Like he thought that was what Harry needed.

"Implying, what? That you're not?" His own smile grew at the thought. Draco didn't find it funny, eyebrows furrowed together—confused. 

"No, Draco," Harry said to the far wall because he kind of couldn't stand to look him directly in the face when he looked like that. "I haven't considered really looking, to be honest."

"But you've looked," he said quietly. Harry swallowed, not sure how much to let on. What was owed?

"I've been lonely," he said instead, and Draco didn't react, sipped his tea. Harry sighed, wished he could reach out and touch him. Shivers ran through his body as though a sharp breeze kept rippling across the kitchen. He couldn't control them, and Harry knew that to wrap him up in his arms and rock him to sleep, that that would be a short term cure to his pain, but he couldn't. Touch was so much easier than words, and in some ways, he felt like it said more, but it was a buffer—a way around, rather than through. "I just wish you'd talked to me. You've been punishing yourself, but all this space—it felt like you were punishing me, too." He looked down to his ragged nails, to the half-moon he'd pressed into his own dry skin, angry and red and very nearly ready to break through to the blood vessels beneath. "You don't know what you've put me through. If it's been hell for you, it's been hell for me, too."

Draco sniffled, valiantly trying to maintain control of his breathing. "I know."

Harry frowned, could feel it turning down the corners of his lips, knew he looked fierce some when he felt like this. Not angry, but distinctly unimpressed. 

"I don't think you do, and I don't know that I believe you. I wrote to you so early on—you'll make me seem a fool if I believe that this all happened overnight."

Harry studied Draco's face, looking for signs of a lie, but all he saw there was anguish. He kept his grey eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, trained on the hardwood of the table. None of this was easy for him to admit—it cost something for him to do the explaining.

 _Good_ , Harry thought, _he ought to fucking suffer the way I've suffered._

"Your letters were beautiful," he breathed, "I don't deserve them. Even before Christmas, I wanted to take it all back, but by then there was—" He broke off and fumbled for another cigarette, perching the arm that held it on the table while the other tucked around to squeeze his knees in tighter.

"Say it. By then, there was what? What stopped you?"

Draco closed his eyelids, pursing his lips on a long exhale before he could drive the words out.

"There was me, being the person you haven't had to see me be before."

"So what, you were drinking? You could come to me with that—" 

"There was Noah," Draco stared, hollow-eyed at the long cylinder of ash, let it fall to the ground. "I was drinking. There were—others."

Harry hadn't considered that. _Others_. Others, plural, could mean lots of things. None of them good, but somehow, none of them important. After all, _others_ weren't even important enough to be named.

"Have you been on drugs?" Harry asked. Draco gave a tight shake of his head, shaking it on and on. 

"No, no, no. Nope. Not that bad, it hasn't gotten that bad. There's bad, and then there's—" he looked down to the ground, to the dirt, as though to say _and then there's the bad that doesn't have a word for it, and I'm not that, not quite yet._

"But still, I'm a monster when I'm depressed, Harry. I'm mean and careless, and I couldn't—I can't _do_ normal things." He opened his eyes and studied Harry through eyelashes wet and clumped together in spikes, the weight of his confessions clear in the look he gave him.

"I tried to write you a proper letter a dozen times, and the words wouldn't come. Nothing was good enough—stringing ten words together became a mountain." He pulled the backs of his hands across his eyes to dry them, so like a child that Harry realized, really realized for the first time how small he seemed, perched as he was on his chair. How young he looked, fuelled by how thin he'd become. It no longer seemed like a choice, but like a disappearing act, like he was unravelling, going backwards through time. 

"That fucking note is the longest thing I've written since November, and it's trash because I'm trash." He gave a crooked smile at something Harry couldn't see. "I'm not good for much, you know."

And Harry knew he should tell him that he wasn't trash, but instead he said. "But you had Noah." He latched onto that. _You had someone, and that someone wasn't me, because you replaced me in a heartbeat._ A lump had developed in Harry's throat, but he wouldn't let it overpower him, wouldn't dare give in to the feeling. "You went with him, all this time? Things got hard, and—why him? Why not me? If you've been calling and texting him, you could have sent me a text message, even—"

"I don't call him. Ever." Draco said the words with such conviction that Harry was slightly taken aback, wondering where this vehemence had been all night. " _I_ can't even read my own text messages, and I don't message him either. He called me—he calls me. I don't know how he got my number, but as soon as I had one, he called me." 

Their eyes met at this confession. Harry had given Draco his first mobile ages before the meltdown of their relationship. That the prick had been in contact with Draco long before their break made sense—he couldn't have known otherwise when Draco would be available, alone, so quickly. Harry pushed back from the table, the air in the room descending rapidly in temperature. He hadn't considered that Draco could have, would have been with him _before_.

"And did you," Harry licked his lips, finding his mouth suddenly dry, "did you used to pick up? Have you been in contact—for how long?"

Draco shook his head. "No, not like that. He's always trying to worm his way back in, every so often. _'Just checking in,'"_ he parroted the words in Noah's American accent, spitting them out begrudgingly. "I never used to pick up. He just called one night when I was too tired to say no."

Harry is morbidly fascinated that it had been so easy. "Say no to what?" 

"He calls, he tells me what to do, and I do it. It's simple." It was like Draco only understood half the words he was being asked. "Do you want me to go into detail?" Harry shook his head, no. It wasn't that he didn't care—he feared caring too much, and to that end, what he'd do to Noah next he saw him if he knew the depths of his degeneracy.

"He's terrible," Harry said, and Draco gave a one-shouldered shrug. Harry was vehement though, put down his mug and placed his palms flat on the tabletop, not wanting his anger to overpower the meaning of his words. "I'm surprised I didn't hex him tonight." Draco flicked a look at him, and Harry wasn't sure what he would do if he sneered, then. If he went not just low, but lower. If he asked _Jealous?_ But Draco didn't do any of that, his gaze flat, eyes mirrors rather than windows.

"And not just—not just because he's your ex or anything. Separate from whatever happens between us, he's not good for you."

"I know," he sniffled, playing with the cuffs to his shirt, but Harry shook his head.

"I don't think you do. He offered you up to me. Said we could share you, like you were some, some _thing_."

He held Draco's eyes while he said this and Draco blinked once, and sat still, nothing registering on his face, and Harry realized that even this wasn't a revelation to him. That this was why Draco hadn't asked why Harry had gotten rid of Noah in the first place—that this was the size and shape of their relationship with one another, and Harry hadn't wanted to pity Draco, hadn't wanted to feel anything for him other than anger and frustration but right then he did pity him this one thing. That he'd bought into the narrative where Noah was what he deserved, along with whatever degradation came along with it.

"Promise me you won't see him anymore. I don't care about others, just not him. Promise me that, please." Draco nodded gently at Harry's utterance, and they sat with that for a while. Harry so desperately craved touching him then that he sat on his hands, sure that they'd roam his face and pull his frail form close if he left them free to their own devices.

"So, what now?" Harry asked the quiet room, noticing the tinge of another daybreak through Draco's kitchen windows. It was that liminal time between days, the time they used to share solely while panting, skin slipping against one another's by sweat, Draco handsy and talkative and Harry sated and scared for the messy ball of emotions he was fast developing. And now they were here, no rules, no clear boundaries.

"It's all a bit of a mess now, isn't it?"

Harry dragged his eyes over after Draco spoke the words into the still air. His lips were awry, twisted to the side, eyes bloodshot, and all his sniffling, the micro-sways one way or another stopped. He had more to say, and it was like something clicked into place, changing his demeanour. Subtle, a snake going from playing dead on its back and flipping over, preparing to strike as you walked away. There was something else. Something unsaid.

"The distance from you has been," he paused and looked at Harry, an unknown emotion pinching his face, "enlightening."

"How so?"

"Simmons was transferred, did you know that?" Draco licked cracked lips, red in spots from being nibbled on, and Harry could taste his magic then, could tell that Draco wasn't just sorrowful and spent, he was also, somewhere deep down that he'd kept well hidden, _furious_. Powerful tendrils licked at Harry's skin, the faint waft of soil and rotting fruit.

If the hollowness and the vacancy of emotion, the sobbing, the lack of ability or striving, if that was the queen's head on the coin of depression, then this was the tails. Harry remained quiet, pulse picking up in time.

"But of course you know that. They made it seem like a simple shuffle, but it was a demotion, any way you slice it. And Robards—sure, you can't take him to court over any of this, he's far too smart to leave his sticky fingerprints on anything." He gave a louche wave with one hand and placed his feet back on the floor, a shadow of the former Draco shining through as he gained momentum. He leaned into Harry space, smoke and orange oil in his nostrils. "But still, not a whiff, not even a sideways mention of his name in the papers."

Harry gulped, and he could see the moment when Draco took his silence as confirmation.

 _He knows_.

Of course, Draco would put it all together. Harry appreciated him for his cunning, but he had underestimated him in this. Draco knew when to hold the line; how to stay quiet and watch, a snake in the grass, striking only when the time was right.

A half-smile pulled at Draco's lips. "And wouldn't you know it, I was offered the spot over in Mysteries. Why do you think that is, Harry?"

Harry didn't speak. He averted his eyes and stared at the dregs of his tea until he didn't see it anymore. He wished that he could throw the mug he held, break something. Why couldn't they just have a good scream about it, and then they could feel better and could be back together, and Harry wouldn't have this thing so like Guilt lodged in his chest.

"Fine then, don't answer. You and I both know why it is I'm still working at the Ministry—"

"And that's good," Harry blurted. Draco's eyes widened even though his stare remained blank.

"Good? For whom, exactly? If you and I know why I'm there—"

"Because you deserve to be there. You earned your place—"

"Not anymore!" Draco pushed his chair back from the table, its legs scratching the floorboards. "Now it's because you went behind my back, and if word gets out, and trust me, it will, then what will I be?"

"Nobody is going to know," Harry started to placate him, but it was no use.

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child!" He screamed it, and Harry was thankful for the silencing charm he'd put in place just in case and saw all of a sudden the more likely reason for Draco's throat sounding like it had been grated raw. "I'm not some fucking charity case, Harry. You don't get to _fix_ me. This," he gestured at himself with a sweep of his arm, from head to toe, " _this_ is me. _This_ ," he moved to the sink, lightning-quick and grabbed the empty magnum bottle, swinging it for emphasis, "this is me. What you got, that was a smoke show. That was me trying to be something, but I can't outrun me. And now I'm worse, somehow, than just Draco Malfoy, Death Eater. Now I'll be Harry Potter's favoured fuck!"

Harry sucked his teeth, projected a calm he didn't feel. "That's not fair, Draco—"

But Draco wasn't listening anymore. He burned brightly, running on this fuel.

"I'll be the one people whisper about again. Me! I spent years undoing that, and for what? For fucking _what—_ to go and trust you, like a bloody idiot. I knew I shouldn't trust you, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. And it'll be about how all I have to do is sink to my knees, and I get anything I want."

Harry swallowed hard and counted down from three, taking a deep breath before he responded. _He's not himself; he's on potions, he's drunk._

"Listen, it's late, and you're tired. It's not like that—"

"It doesn't matter what it's like! It's going to look like I rode your dick for a promotion, and you know what? Now they won't be half wrong."

"Stop it," Harry snapped, but Draco was picking up steam, cruelty coming awfully naturally to him. 

He dropped his chin low and looked up at Harry, his best impression of a sultry glare. He swaddled the empty bottle tightly to his chest, fingertips sweeping at a collarbone through the fabric of his shirt. "Was I good, Harry? If I never sucked your cock again, would it make you happy to know that you got me where I am?"

"That's not true, and you know it." 

"Was I worth it?" Draco was close to tears again and covered for it magnificently. They'd spill soon—he couldn't control anything, absolutely not himself. "Tell me I was worth it. That I made it good for you. Tell me you'd do it all over just to get between my legs again," he whispered, soft as could be, stepping ever closer to Harry.

 _This is the monster that will devour him whole_.

The way his eyes glinted, Harry wouldn't be surprised if he started spitting next, foaming at the mouth.

 _But you're not the person responsible for saving him from it_.

He knew it was the truth, but that didn't mean that he believed it. He wanted very badly, just then, to be wrong.

Draco extended a finger from where they'd curled around the neck of the bottle to point at him.

" _You_ interfered and went against what I explicitly asked of you. And now I'm embroiled in whatever deal with the devil you cut—"

"But it wasn't fair," Harry said, and it was petulant to his own ears. 

Draco growled, throwing the bottle with unbridled ferocity. It smashed on the doorjamb to the toilet, hitting the wall hard enough that the clock hung there fell off its nail, its glass face exploding across the floor in a thousand shards, and he wasn't done. He lunged forwards and swiped everything on the table with such force that it flew to the wall too, a great, loud mess. 

"Life's not fair! Tough shit!" Draco's breaths heaved out of him as he stalked over to the sink, and Harry wondered if he was going for the wine glasses too, but he just stood there, a hand on either side of the white tile and gulped breaths, his head low and shoulder blades high, like wings escaping his back.

Harry hadn't flinched, stared at the pile as tea dripped down the jagged edge where the arm had broken from his mug. He watched it dripping, wondered who'd be the one among them to clean it up. 

"You never should have been sacked in the first place." He spoke calmly, and Draco made a sound. Something that wasn't a scream, at least. "It was my fault, and I needed to fix it."

Draco turned to him, eyes wide with disbelief. "I didn't ask you to fix it, and I certainly didn't _need_ you to fix it, and how, by the way, just _how_ arrogant can you be? That it was you, _had_ to be you, the reason I was sacked?"

Heat flamed on Harry's cheeks, a burning flush building. "I can't prove it, sure, but the chance is strong that your being fired was retribution."

Draco groaned at the ceiling. His voice was abandoning him completely, odd stops and starts that he spoke through even when the sound was little more than breath forced out over vocal cords, though anger seemed to give him an uncanny strength.

_Maybe that's what he's been running on. Cigarettes and spite._

"Do you hear yourself? A _chance_ , sure, there's a _chance_. But I need to make it on my own two feet. I want to be known for my abilities, not my name, and certainly not because of yours. I want to be _respected_ in the world. Can you get that? Can you even begin to understand that?"

Harry reached for his wand and went to send a charm at the pile of detritus, but Draco had pulled his own and hexed him so quickly that his wand was swatted free from his hand. Harry marvelled at it. No one had managed to disarm him in training, not that they'd really been trying, but still. It gave him a sick thrill, that Draco _wanted_ to beat Harry at things and that sometimes, he could.

"Leave it," he hissed, low, "we're talking. Answer me."

"But it was because of me. If it wasn't for me—"

"You never listen!" Draco growled a yell, pushed the meat of his palms into his eyes. "Because you know what else you've done now? Now I can't go about the legal route of contesting my dismissal." When he pulled his hands away, his eyes were leaking again, wetting the white tracks where the salt from his first outburst had only just dried. "I can't talk to the union, I can't seek a settlement that's above board. And if you and I are together, you can be sure that someone is going to dig into my work history, and then what? Then what?"

Harry looked forlornly to his wand, useless on the table, and wondered why his Gryffindor brashness only seemed to crop up when it was least needed. He needed to feel as bold now as he had when he'd sat in Kingsley's office, confident as a braggart, and made the ask about Draco's reinstatement. How straightforward that had been. And now this—his help thrown back in his face like so much mouldering rubbish.

"I was just trying to help," Harry managed.

"Stop it, Harry," Draco spoke softly, and Harry's excuses shrivelled into dust in his mouth. "Just stop."

Draco exhaled through his hands, covering the entirety of his face. He heaved a breath and crossed over to the fridge, swinging the door open on its hinges and pulling out a half-empty bottle of red wine. Harry held his tongue even as Draco summoned a clean glass and filled it halfway, bringing it back to the dining table as he retook his seat. He took a gulp and closed his eyes.

"I'd offer you one too, but I promised myself that I wouldn't be a part of the problem for you. If you want one, you can get it for yourself," he said at last.

"I thought you didn't drink," Harry answered. Draco shrugged and swirled the wine in the glass, letting it go still it and watching the legs form.

"I still don't, often. I find it leads to poor decision making."

The _often_ was surprising. Harry licked his lips. "Why are you now?"

"Maybe I've been interested in making bad decisions, lately." He sighed, and when he finally looked Harry in the eyes again, the fire had gone out of them. Harry wondered if he looked as scared or exhausted as he felt. Draco was blank, again—composure achieved, he could be feeling any number of ways.

"You still took it," Harry said, massaging one hand with the other. When he looked back up, he discovered that this was the point that landed. Draco bowed his head and exhaled deeply, mashing his bottom lip between his teeth. It was bleeding down the centre line, and against all that was good and healthy, Harry still wanted to take his mouth with his own, and to lap it up.

"The job. You could have said no, but you took it." Harry watched unhappily as Draco took a gulp of wine, then another, grimacing as he swallowed it. "You could have left it."

"Bad decision making has been my forte of late," Draco mumbled. He chewed his cheek, killing time. Harry wanted this to end, and soon—his body needed sleep, even as his mind railed on for a clear cut end to their conversation. An apology that encompassed it all, a new set of rules. But it wasn't looking likely that they'd come to a consensus before sunrise proper.

Draco pushed the glass away from himself and washed his hands over his head, resting his elbows on the table and speaking to his lap. 

"Look. The parts of you that are good are so fucking good—but this job, it's just one more thing. I'm not going to pretend that I haven't been cross with you about this, even when I'm also cross with myself. You don't _listen_ to me, Harry, not really." Harry didn't think that was fair but held his tongue. Draco's voice was shot, like gravel crunching on a dirt road, like it was clotted, scarring over. And if ever there was a time for him to shut up and listen, it was then.

"People aren't going to like me. Lots of people don't, and that's fine. I deal with it how I like, my way, and if you have a problem with that then you need to look the other way, but you can't seem to do it. The hero inside you wants to pop out, and it's exhausting to deal with the world and you, too."

"I can try to let things be," Harry started slowly, "but—"

Draco held up a finger, and Harry hushed.

"It's like I'm talking to a wall. You can't go doing things like this _for_ me. I make my own choices, and then I live with them. Can you understand that?"

Harry played with his wand on the table, rolling it back and forth until little sparks rained from its tip. Some biscuits had fallen from the plate before it sailed into the wall, and he picked one up and bit into it, let it melt into buttery bliss on his tongue. He groaned, it was so good—he'd been awake too long, and dinner was ages ago. He finished the biscuit and slumped into the chair, heavy in his body.

"Yeah. Yeah, I can understand that, and I—I overstepped this time. But I'm always going to be me, Draco," he said tiredly. "And that means that some things, for me, are always going to be complicated. For whatever reason, with my luck, shit like this—like Justin—seems to just happen. Benefits of being me." He sighed, sorrowful at what _shit like this_ encompassed. "I don't want to ask you to accept that, but it is what it is, and I can't change all of it. I can only control my little piece of the puzzle, and I tried here, so fucking hard to make this okay for you. I tried to make it better."

Draco rubbed his chin clean, wiped his face with the sodden square of toilet roll, and huffed a conclusive breath. He followed Harry's lead and picked up a biscuit, chewed it thoughtfully before washing it down with wine, and then quickly ate another. Errant crumbs were quickly pushed into his fingertips, and he licked them as though each one was a rich and delicious sauce.

"I know you did, Harry. I'm sorry I've stayed away." His voice was broken now, dissolved to dust. Sunshine streamed through the window over the sink and glinted off the empty wine glasses, sending prisms of rainbow colours to paint the far wall. "It wasn't fair to you, and you deserved better. You do, deserve better than me."

Soon, the morning light would reach the halo of Draco's peachy hair, and touch his face, and Harry needed for them to exit the room before that happened. He missed seeing Draco in all ways, but in the morning, still asleep, his features made clear by sunlight—that was how Harry liked to see him best.

"It's not about what I deserve. If we're speaking plainly, I think we should talk about what we want." Harry swallowed, the expected nervous writhing in his stomach, somehow nowhere to be found. He was calm in this decision. It was something he'd already known, already decided, and it felt _right_.

He sucked in a deep breath, and with it, exhaled all the bitterness swirling in him. All the want to gnash and hurt.

"You said 'if you and I are together'. Earlier—you said that." Draco didn't shrug now, just stared at him, and he was so fucking close, and so sad, and it was painfully, brutally obvious that what he wanted so badly was what Harry wanted too. Needed, maybe.

"What I want is you, Draco. If we can't go back to before, then I want to try something new. If you'll have me." He put down his wand at last and outstretched his hand, palm up on the table. It rested inches from Draco's, still curled tightly around the bulb of his wine glass.

"This is why it's better that I've kept you away," Draco said, voice barely a whisper. He stared at Harry's outstretched palm but didn't move to take it.

"Why?"

Draco stared at his hand like it was water and he'd been parched, cast adrift on the ocean for so long without a sip to drink.

"I can't touch you because I know how you make me feel."

"How do I make you feel?" Harry asked. Draco bit his lip, his eyes wet and pleading when he finally looked up into Harry's.

"Wonderful," he said with the saddest smile, looking at Harry like something he had lost and just now found. "But drugs make one feel wonderful too, don't they? And they're not good for you in the end, not at all."

"I think we can be good for each other," Harry said, and he meant it. His throat scratched, and he let the emotion colour his words. "I want to be good for you. And you make me better, Draco. No one has ever made me feel the way you do." He extended his fingers, waiting, and all at once the urge to make that final move welled up in him, spilt over, like it was steam held under pressure for so long and this night had opened the seam that would let the feeling spring up and out.

"And I love you. I do."

It was as though Draco stopped breathing, though he blinked, in shock. He blinked again quickly, those wondrous eyelashes fluttering, and as he opened his mouth to say something in response, Harry held a finger up, nearly brushing his lips. "Please—you don't have to—don't say anything." He dropped the hand, and they sat there, staring at one another until Harry sat back, a flush warming his cheeks. He felt shy, somehow, to have said it now, but not embarrassed. It didn't even matter to him if Draco said it back. "I just had to say it. I'm tired of pretending not to feel everything for you, Draco. Everything in the world."

Draco put down the glass at last and placed his hands in the small of his back. He dropped his chin to and huffed a laugh into his chest.

"I don't know what to do with you," he said. It sounded like a plea, a question. Harry shrugged.

"Take my hand," he said, the words coming easily. It was simple, really. That's all it would take to start. "Take my hand, and we'll go from there."

Draco stared at it and went to grab his glass instead, and then he stopped. He stared at it, at the last mouthful, a shallow of ruby red, and at last, he pushed it to the side, and when he slipped his hand into Harry's, it sent a shiver running up his arm, into his spine, through his whole body. His palm was smooth and dry, just the way Harry remembered, fingers long, though his knuckles were too dark—knocked up—but it was perfect. He curled his fingers to squeeze Harry's hand inside his own, and they both exhaled, looking to one another with unmasked affection.

"Was that so hard?" Harry asked. Draco closed his eyes and gave a pained smile.

"It wasn't easy," he said. And then, "I'm not well, Harry. I'm still not making good decisions."

"That's alright." Harry revelled in Draco's skin, glad to be able _finally_ to rub his thumb across the smooth skin on the back of this hand, to feel his pulse, faint but real, thumping closely in time with his own. "I've got you."

He tugged gently, and Draco came forwards so easily, it was like pulling at wet paper, and then their lips met, hesitant, the kiss slow and jarring all the same. His mouth was acrid from the dryness of the wine and the smoke of untold cigarettes, but Harry couldn't care because he was kissing Draco again, it made every cell in his body come alive all at once. Draco deepened it quickly, his hands finding Harry's face and relearning its curves and then they were standing, no more space between them, and they paused the kiss so that they could undress one another, carefully. So that Harry could pinch open the tiny fastener of the choker at Draco's neck, and Draco unbuttoned his shirt, fingers deftly relieving the tiny buttons from their holes. He pressed his hand to the firmness of Harry's stomach and breathed in Harry's surprised exhalation at fingers oddly cold against his hot skin. They kissed again languidly, one pair of lips following the either at each gentle pull away, coaxing them back for just a little more, a little more. Harry's fingers found the bottom edge of his turtleneck and pulled it up and off, discarding it to the floor of glass shards, and was startled enough by what was revealed beneath it that the displeasure he felt showed clearly on his face, because Draco pulled away, frowning.

"What?" Draco whispered.

"What's this?" Harry traced the outline of a square at the centre of Draco's throat, above the bump of his Adam's apple. The gesture jolted Draco's memory, and he clutched at it to cover it and looked at Harry like he was going to cry afresh.

"I'm not angry." Harry prised his cold fingers away from the spot and brushed them against his lips. Draco swallowed hard, managed to whisper, "It's just a bruise," as Harry shook his head.

"No, no. We're talking now. This—if we're doing this again, new rules. The truth, always. No more secrets." He held Draco's face between his hands, and he nodded, infinitesimal but there. "What is it?"

Draco swallowed, testing the words in his mouth a few times before he could push them out with sound.

"It's a bruise. From a belt," he elaborated. Harry nodded, thumbing it. He could see where the edges of a strap had left faint marks around the sides of his throat; how the bar that the clasp rested on left a thicker line of purple than the other sides of the square buckle.

"Does it hurt?" he asked. Draco shook his head very slowly from side to side, and Harry accepted that as true.

"Was it him?" He didn't have to specify who _him_ was, and Draco continued shaking his head.

"No. Someone else."

Harry nodded. If he'd thought about the scenario earlier, he would be sure that he'd feel possessiveness spike within him. Anger at the unknowns. Or Jealousy, that Draco had this secret from him. That he'd liked it, liked it better than he'd liked Harry. But at the moment all he felt was worry and curiosity, blended.

"Did you like it?" He undid the buttons to the cuffs of his own shirt so that it could fall from where it had been trapped at his wrists to the floor.

Draco replied softly. "I asked for it."

"That's not an answer to the question."

Harry touched one side of his face, and Draco leaned into the touch as a cat would to being pet. He let his arms fall around Harry's waist and leaned into him like he needed to be held up. It felt good, to cradle his cheek like that, allowed at long last to relearn the roughness of his jaw where stubble was pushing in.

"I liked it okay." His breath tickled Harry's wrist. "I'd like to do it to you if you want to try."

Harry raised a brow. He might like it, honestly. Was willing to try anything, basically, where Draco was concerned. "Were you keeping it as a souvenir?" Harry thumbed the outline again, curious how it had felt; turned on at the concept of letting someone else do it to him; wanting to learn it for himself.

_Not someone. Draco. Always Draco._

"No."

He hummed, considering. "You're just too shit at healing charms to heal it?"

Draco cracked a smile to one side, eyes still closed and face still pressed into Harry's palm. The smile grew into a tired laugh, remembering that time so long ago when he'd last needed Harry to heal a bruise for him. And then Draco was gripping the wrist of the hand that held his face, his other hand at Harry's opposite shoulder, and he was crying, a tired, smooth sort of a letting go. Harry held him close and rocked the both of them back and forth until it passed, one hand rubbing down the slope of his skull to the mountain ridge of his spine, shushing him. He gently loosened his grip from around his back when the tears stopped flowing.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"Sleep," Draco whispered back. Harry kissed his hair and rubbed the tops of his shoulders.

"Then let's go to bed. I'll heal it, and then we can sleep." Draco nodded, gingerly pulling himself out of Harry's grasp.

"Yeah, alright. You go ahead. I'll be right behind you."

Harry wanted to question why, but it was late, and he was tired, and not everything needed an answer, so he kissed Draco on the forehead instead and squeezed his hand before heading for the stairs.

"Be careful with the glass," he called, just because he had to say it, and Draco made a sound in response that he'd heard him, that he would.

As he removed his clothes and folded them in a pile in the bedroom, pulling the curtains tight, he could hear water in the pipes downstairs. Odd, but perhaps not. He might be washing the dishes by hand—perhaps he didn't want the wine glasses to be the first thing he saw in the morning.

The water kept running, and Harry took the chance to strip the bed, stuffing the used sheets in the laundry hamper and straightening the last pillow in its case by the time Draco ascended the stairs and joined him in the darkened room. He refused to lay his head on the same fabric as that man, the real monster, who he would never, ever again allow to darken Draco's door.

Draco didn't say anything as he slipped into the sheets beside Harry, handing him a phial of the potion they both needed. Harry necked half and watched as Draco took the other half dose, turning away from him as he pulled the duvet up to his neck.

"Hold on," Harry whispered, laying a hand over his throat in the gesture of choking him but concentrating instead on dissipating the dead blood cells of the bruising, a warmth shared by their skin. Draco's breaths came unevenly and then, as Harry pulled the hand away and nestled into him, the bigger of the spoons for the night, Harry counted as his breaths gentled and slowed.

"You'll stay?" Draco asked the quiet of the room. He took Harry's free hand and pulled it around him, wove their fingers together and held onto it tightly at his sternum. Though he meant in the morning, or at least until he also woke, Harry took it for its more expansive meaning.

He'd stay through the bad and the good. Through the morning, and whatever challenges the new day brought. He'd stay as long as Draco would have him, and he'd stay even after that, just to make sure that he was alright.

"Yeah. Sleep now," he kissed the nape of his neck, and within moments of his sigh, he knew Draco to be asleep. Harry held tight and closed his eyes, falling asleep for the first time in weeks with the aid of the touch of the person he loved in his arms.

* * *

**Notes** : This chapter has grown so large that it's been cut into two parts, and that means that this first half is ready nice and early, for all you playing along at home :)

Chapter title from the fantastic "Body Language" by Helena Deland. I'm so looking forward to my winter holidays from work to finish writing the final handful of chapters and get them edited and out to you!

Next chapter by **Friday, January 1.** Thanks, as always, for the kudos & comments. Hope you're well xx


	18. Babylon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New normals, party planning, and interesting invitations.
> 
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Depression, eating disorders

* * *

**Thursday, January 8, 2004**

The first time Harry awoke it was to damp sheets and a ragged inhalation.

Harry was startled awake and scared, shot full of adrenaline. Draco loomed over him, a white slash in the inky-blue darkness of the room. He clutched at Harry, the tips of his nails dug in deep enough to leave marks, grey eyes wide with surprise. Harry flipped them so that they switched positions, his weight mounting Draco's narrow hips, his hands at Draco's armpits, forcing his skinny arms to stop reaching for him.

"Draco, stop, what's happening, what's—"

Draco puffed a sound, like the little sounds he made during sex—close to pleasure, possibly pain. Up close, Harry could see that he was frightened too, and he watched as that look slipped into confusion, then shame. He had been the one to startle Harry awake by shaking him violently, but as Draco clutched his hands into his chest, it was apparent that he hadn't meant to.

"What's the matter?" Harry let go of his arms and shifted back, his heart racing so quickly it was like it was trying to stampede out of his chest. 

"Nothing, nothing, it's—bad dream." Draco looked around the room and then to Harry, touched the side of his face gently. Harry lifted up off of him, another question on his lips, but Draco quickly pulled the covers back and swept out of the bed. "I need a water," he muttered by way of explanation and he then he was gone into the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him, clicking again as he locked it.

Harry cast _Tempus_ and squinted at the numbers that dissipated into a mist. It was still morning, not yet noon, and he needed ages more sleep. He settled back under the covers and watched the washroom's closed door through the open doorway as he turned the questions he had for Draco over in his mind. To wake from what should have been a dreamless sleep dreaming bad dreams, that wasn't normal, didn't spell anything good. And why had he tried to wake Harry so vociferously, and why had Harry's being asleep scared him? Soon his eyelids fluttered shut for a rest, and before he realized it was a possibility, sleep pulled him back under.

The second time Harry awoke it was to a cold and dry expanse, Draco's side of the bed still empty. He blinked into the room, the quality of light sneaking in from under the curtains unchanged, which meant that the sun hadn't yet gone down over London. Fumbling for his glasses, he noted the sound of rain against the windowpanes to his right, the shower running in the other room, down the hall.

Draco's running clothes lay in a jumble on the floor of the landing. They were piled as though Draco had vanished mid-step, a totem to a man that had turned to air. When Harry bent over to grab them, he found them sodden wet and bone-cold, the scent of the outdoors clinging to them. These were banished to his laundry pile as Harry pushed the door to the washroom open and knocked on the wall, already damp with condensation.

"What?"

Draco's peeved face rounded the corner of the translucent shower curtain, eyebrows pulled down into a piqued 'v' in the centre. Harry swallowed the want to prod his mood, remembering the night that had brought them to this place, the tenuousness of the thing between them. He'd do anything to keep that word in his vocabulary, _them_ , so instead of poking, he gave a soft smile.

"Just wondered where you were," he said, and the brows relaxed slightly. Something was off, though—Draco wasn't returning to his shower. He felt the need to watch Harry, and the why of it was the question now running through Harry's mind.

"Mind if I come in to slash?" Draco's nose wrinkled, disgusted, and Harry had to scoff.

"Not into the bath, you wank—just in the room with you."

Draco eyed him a second longer and then tilted his head and pulled the curtain back along the rail, almost but not quite an acceptance of Harry into the space. He stepped inside and closed the door, his naked body glad to be ensconced in the warm, wet air.

"Where'd you run to?" Harry kept his tone light, giving in to one of his only-somewhat-secret pleasures—sitting to piss while tired. It had the added benefit of giving him a continued vantage point to watch Draco's form through the shower curtain, only the edges of his body visible in the foggy white space.

"My usual," came the gruff reply. Harry rolled his eyes, shook off and stood, waving a hand to flush the toilet. The urge came over him to check to see what the room held beneath its barren countertop. This was Draco's pantry, after all—he escaped to it when overwhelmed, found solace in water, whether it made sense to Harry or not, it was true. The pantry had held evidence of Harry's secrets—tumblers and empty bottles and sometimes, more than he cared to remember, the scent of piss or vomit. But the countertop before Harry gleamed, innocuous. Draco's boar bristle brush was there, a bar of soap, stack of handtowels and his toothbrush and a cup, acquiescences to Muggle methods, and that was it. They were the only things reflected back at Harry in the mirror—even the mirror was eerily clean, too clean for the monster of Depression to maintain unless it held a purpose in doing so of forcing its prey to bow low—no—lower. Harry marvelled that Draco kept so many of the things around during the daytime, mirrors and darkened windows that he sometimes used in their stead. He took in his own black hair, curling around his ears, unwashed in a few days and oily at the roots. More than the bottle-green of his eyes, he noticed the smudges on his glasses lenses. He still only liked seeing himself in mirrors as Draco saw him when he was splitting him open—through Draco's eyes, he could love the look of himself. Through his own, he still saw someone that wasn't there anymore— _freak, mistake_ —the formerly scrawny boy with a scarred face.

"Enlighten me to your usual," Harry said, opening the drawer closest to the sink. It was filled with regular ephemera, some Muggle, some magical—iridescent hair serums and elixirs with ingredients like the blood of bats or moth wings, tucked alongside colognes and spot treatments as-seen-on-TV. Everything in meticulous order to Draco's exacting standards. The next drawer held hand towels, and the cupboard under it more towels, of the full-bodied variety.

"I took you once, remember? Over to Battersea, and the zoo, and back past the gardens. You could join me—what are you looking for?"

His face was back, but smooth this time, fingers clutching the edges of the shower curtain. The smooth expanse of his forehead was a lie, as he pretended that Harry's search wasn't bothering him, and he was doing it badly. Harry knelt in front of the last cupboard, expecting—what was he expecting? Empty bottles of Smirnoff, maybe, or Dreamless Sleep, or bloodied bandages, or a store of pills, maybe. Something, anything that would explain the tightness in his chest, a tightness that was directly proportional to how Draco was acting right then, which when it came down to it was just a feeling. Only a feeling.

Harry looked in and found a small plastic bin for rubbish, more towels, a scale, and a basket full of hair ribbons and ties and bobby pins of every make and colour. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing at all that could account for Draco's eyes following him as he stood and closed the cupboard door, a misshapen black hair tie in hand.

"Just looking for something to transfigure into a toothbrush," Harry said, and then he caught himself, winced at the words. It was a lie, even if it felt like the right thing to say, it wasn't, not anymore. "No, that's not it, entirely. To be honest, I don't know what I'm looking for. What it is you don't want me to find?"

Draco blinked as water pooled from where it ran down the angles of his face and dripped from his bottom lip, and it wasn't fair at all, Harry thought, to have to hold this conversation with him when his face was made the way it was and was rosy and wet, just so beautiful that he could hardly stand to look at him at all.

"Nothing." He sucked in that bottom lip to catch a drip. "I'm not hiding anything if that's what you're insinuating. At least not in here."

They both huffed a breath at the same time, and it was enough to break the moment. Draco's eyes faltered, cast down Harry's body and back up again. It was strange for them to hold the conversation without the relentless groping of their hands getting in the way. Draco cocked his head to the side and sighed.

"Did you want to come in, then?"

Harry swallowed and looked to the hair tie.

"Nah," he shook his head. It was odd because of course he wanted to be under the scorching water, to be wherever Draco was, especially naked, but Draco hadn't told him to _get in here_ , Draco had posed it as a question. And he clung to the curtain as though it was a barrier he needed between them, a thing he controlled, and Harry understood that.

"Well then, we ought to get you a proper toothbrush before you end up transfiguring my entire hair accessories collection," Draco said with a sniff. Harry smiled down at the little ring of black elastic, heart unexplainably in his throat.

"It's just the one," he said, enough to make Draco _harrumph_. He watched as the points of Draco's elbows emerged, visible above the steel shower curtain bar as he worked hair product in, releasing the smell that would soothe Harry till the day he died.

"Oh sure, it's just the one today," Draco grumbled, "and then the next day, and the next, and give it a couple of weeks, and I'll be needing a pin, and where will I be, then?" Harry commenced brushing his teeth and dribbled a considerable amount of foam down his chin, his smile irrepressible at Draco's seemingly never-ending diatribe. "I'll tell you where I'll be, I'll be out of anything worth using, that's what. My hair grows abnormally quickly, it'll be back before you know it, and that in-between phase— _Christ_ , I'll be absolutely fucked without the proper quantities of things, and you wouldn't know anything of it, but they disappear, Harry, they just— _poof—_ and they're gone, exactly when you need one—"

"Draco?" Harry gargled water and deposited his transfigured brush next to Draco's permanent one.

"What?"

The water cut off and a pale hand reached out and snapped, and Harry rolled his eyes but knew better than to leave him wanting and deposited a towel from the clean pile under the sink into his hand, and was soon confronted with the hand again, demanding another. He waited, blissfully amused as the curtain was finally pulled back to reveal the pinched face of his lover, the overlarge towel wrapped around his waist and the smaller one draped over one shoulder, the opposite edge being rubbed vigorously into his scalp.

"What, Harry?"

Harry walked forwards and took his face between his hands and kissed him until the towel rubbing stopped, and he stopped trying to pull away and get in one last word, and the pale, warm hands he'd missed found his waist and loosely held on.

"Who did you think I was this morning? It was like you didn't recognize me."

Draco worried his bottom lip.

"I was confused. I—I thought you were somebody dead."

"Why didn't you come back to bed?"

Draco closed his eyes, shifted his weight into his back foot, the better to lean away from Harry. As the warmth of the water leached from him, his cheeks passed from a wholesome pink back to the downy blue-white hue he'd taken on lately.

"I didn't want to wake you again, and I was already up. I only need five hours of sleep anyway, it's fine."

"It's not fine—"

"It's fine if I say so," he snapped, the angry Draco flaring up, taking over from the tired one; both of them sad. It was strange for Harry to see the patterns of behaviour that he'd once employed to keep people at arm's length now reflected in Draco's actions, how underneath of his sneer was a grimace, that his words were more obviously fuelled by the fear of loss than of an urge to actually do harm to anyone but himself.

"Just because you're here now doesn't mean that you have to, that you're going to stay. You can't walk in and expect—I won't _change_ overnight, you know. You shouldn't sleepover with me like this, not until—"

"Let's buy me a real toothbrush today, then," Harry interrupted, "because I'm not going anywhere."

Draco heaved a breath. Let it out, and stared awhile at the skylight, a framed portrait of the greyest day on record, then heaved another one, his whole chest expanding and contracting like a bellows.

"I'm sorry I'm so annoying," he offered, "I don't know why I'm like this. I don't want you to go," he added softly, speaking to the sky, and all Harry could do was to pull him in close again.

"It's alright. You're thorny, is all."

One cheek lifted—almost a smile. "What, like a rose?"

"Uh, sure. Yes. Exactly," Harry stammered, and they'd barely pulled apart from the last kiss which made it all the easier to very slowly and deliberately press his lips to Draco again, to his cheek, and then to his eyes, forcing them to close, and Draco was putting on a good show, but he still looked exhausted as Harry rubbed a thumb at the darkened skin underneath one eye.

"I don't mean to be a little shit, it's just—"

"I know," Harry said, "I know. I'll remind you that you gave me plenty of warning. Your due diligence has absolutely been fulfilled." Draco pulled away with a hum, and a cocked brow and Harry could laugh at how much he'd missed that face, his sceptical face.

"Something about being the prince of the dramatic decline—"

"The king," Draco swiftly corrected him, "I'm the king."

"Yes, well, my point exactly."

Draco shook his head and looked to all the points of Harry's face, about to say something, stopping himself.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Harry said as Draco dropped his hands and stepped around him, pulling the door open to the cold air of the stairwell and leading the way back to the bedroom.

"That you need to stop hanging on every word I say," he said, and it wasn't a whole truth, Harry knew it, but he didn't push. Not then, not yet. There were truths, and there were half-truths, and there were things that could be left unsaid until the time was right.

"Half of what comes out of my mouth is utter tripe, you need to know that, darling."

"Is it the half you say when we're fucking or the half you say when we're not?"

Harry hadn't totally thought through dropping the word, _fucking_ , into the conversation. So much of what they'd shared was physical, and the carnal throbbing for Draco's touch still surged in him. Things between them were very nearly always good when it involved fingers in mouths or twisted in each other's hair or holding on to gain leverage or pressing into flesh with enough abandon to leave bruises. Harry couldn't pretend that he didn't still _want_ Draco so severely that it set his teeth on edge. It was like a timer somewhere had been set, and it was ticking down until they'd eventually kiss and it wouldn't stop short, and Harry would have _Draco_ back, fully, wholly, and he wasn't sure if it was the not knowing when that made the waiting worse or would make it sweeter when the moment came.

"Well," Draco stopped, a hand on the doorknob to the closet, frozen in space for a moment. And then it passed, and he walked on as though it hadn't happened. The towel dropped from around his hips as he vanished into the depths of the closet, preparing to dress. 

"That's for me to know and for you to find out, now, isn't it?"

* * *

The first week was entirely strange. Though Harry remembered the contours of their previous relationship to one another, it was obvious that those rules no longer applied. Draco required devotion, didn't want but _needed_ attention for what seemed like his basic survival. Harry tidied for hours on Thursday morning while Draco lay, unmoving, occasionally talking back to the characters on the telly. The afternoon came and went with a trip to nearby Kings Walk mall, where Draco gave his haughtiest and most apathetic stare to the poor teenage girl unfortunate enough to be working the stall selling mobiles. 

Harry tried to stimulate a smile on Draco's face as they walked the aisles of the chemist. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at a packet of condoms that promised _sweet, tingling_ heat, and earned himself a once-over from an elderly woman stood behind him as he regaled Draco with the listed benefits of the "nothing short of magical" properties of a bubblegum flavoured lube. He filled their basket with Draco's favourite treats, _oohing_ and _ahhing_ over packets of crisps. He even performed a short-lived lip sync to a song with the refrain of " _Hey, yaaa!",_ that he somehow, through osmosis, knew the words to. It lasted until the gentleman at the cashier informed him that he best buy the hairbrush he'd been spit singing into or to move along. And while he wouldn't call the effort a lost cause, it seemed that Draco's store of smiles had been used up in the morning, and nothing Harry did in the shop could change that. 

Harry left him at the kitchen table as he put away the toiletries, a warm, scrabbling feeling taking over his insides at the look of his toothbrush next to Draco's. It was strange, this touchstone in his life, where he never would have been able to guess that at some point, the sight of two hunks of plastic next to one another in a cup would be a thing that would bowl him over, but there he was, staring at them as though they might do something significant.

Even that short trip upstairs was a vacation from the dour cloud that hung over Draco. He managed to get so worked up over being unable to slide the SIM card inside the plastic shell of the new mobile that Harry rounded the bottom of the staircase to see him fling the bits away so that they clattered down the length of the table and swing suddenly forwards, cracking his forehead into the wood. It made a terrible flat sound, that smack. 

"Hey!"

He jogged into the kitchen and swallowed the next admonishment. Through him, Draco looked _through_ him with a ferocity Harry recognized from the previous night, shortly before the wine bottle met the wall. The ensuing staring match was won by Harry, Draco looking down and away as a red weal appeared down the centre of his forehead.

"If you get frustrated, you can always ask for help, okay?" Harry softened his tone and approached the table, forcing calm as he fiddled with the tiny bits of plastic. Draco watched him, didn't thank him when he passed the newly beeping device over a minute later.

"What happened to your first mobile anyway?"

Draco looked over to the far wall. "It ended up outside in the rain. I believe it passed away."

Harry's lips twinged into a smile. _Passed away._ It was silly, not a mistake but not entirely correct, either.

Draco rubbed at the red line, frowning. "What's so funny?"

Harry shrugged. He knew better than to ask if he could heal him then, nixed the very thought of asking. "Nothing. It's only, I think the word for it is died, for electronics. They can't really pass away, right? Since they don't have souls." Draco only frowned more deeply, and Harry got up to rummage through the cupboards for something to fix for dinner. "It's funny, people thinking that being Muggle-born, or raised away from magic must cause this huge rift, all this social strife and whatnot, and I think it's actually brilliant."

"Are you laughing at me?" Draco was fast becoming irritated, and Harry hid a tired smile by ducking down to check the low cupboards for something, anything for dinner.

"No, it's only that you say things differently than I do, sometimes, and that's a good thing. It's a melding of cultures or whatever." Draco was about to open his mouth, no doubt to say something harsh, and in the same jovial tone he'd been speaking in before, Harry asked, "What really happened to your first phone? I called and called and—"

"I threw it out the window," Draco spat. He raised a finger to point at the window over the sink. "That window, to be exact. Straight through."

Harry looked to it, imagined the fit in which Draco had chucked the device, how he probably hadn't been aiming for the window. How everything was back in order now, the pane replaced, smooth again. A dark mirror that held them both in the darkness of another bleak night in the city.

"I really don't want to get kicked out," Draco said into the room, all the fight gone out of him. Harry turned to look at him but Draco had pulled his legs up and rested his face against his knees, staring at the far wall. "It's the second window I've broken, and I didn't mean to," he mumbled, and Harry didn't say anything else about it after that and Draco didn't either. They ate beans and toast in silence and went to bed early, sharing a vial of potion. Draco curled into the heart of the bed, and Harry lay on his back, both of them pretending to be asleep until it came for them. Harry woke early to long empty sheets and worry knotting his stomach.

It was Friday, and Friday meant obligations. Harry had to leave, to sit in for Hermione at a S.P.E.W. trust meeting, and though it pained him to go without the chance at a proper goodbye, he managed it. On Draco's return, he found the flat empty, but the kitchen counter full, a steaming mug of black coffee and eggs and toast and fixings left with a note for him, reminding him to drink enough water. Harry scratched out the next two lines of drivel and left before he could rewrite them, his worries made visible on the page.

_Don't coddle him, you'll suffocate him if you're not careful, and he'll push and push and push, and then you'll be alone again, that kind of alone that you can survive, but don't want to. Never again, that kind of alone._

When Harry let himself in that evening, using his key with pride, only the coffee had been removed from under the stasis charm. It was clear from the pattern of stitches pressed into his temple and the angle of the short, crispy hairs on his left side that Draco had been prone all day following his run. His running clothes were still damp in the folds, left where he'd stripped from them on the landing, wet towels abandoned on the floor of the shower. His eyes were blank as empty sheets of paper when Harry entered the living room and turned the telly off.

"Do anything interesting today?" Harry asked, and Draco hadn't even bothered to scoff.

"Blaise came by," he said. He turned onto his back and fished out a packet of cigarettes, held one out for Harry to light.

"How is he doing, then?"

Draco took two little puffs and let his arm fall to the side, off the sofa. His eyes found the black screen again, though only he and Harry were acting in it.

"I asked him to leave before I had the chance to ask," he said, which went a long way to explaining the note Harry received by owl later that evening, inviting him round to Blaise and Matilda's place.

_If I'd given this to Draco, he'd have set it on fire, so if you're reading this—congratulations! We need to talk about the Blond Who Isn't Ready to Hear Sense. Come round ours in the next couple of weeks for a chat. We promise we don't bite._

Harry pocketed the note and promised himself that he'd reach out and follow through on their offer— soon. But soon could mean a lot of things, and _soon_ for Harry sitting down with some of Draco's friends in a way that he would construe as going behind his back, unless Harry _told_ him about it—that was the kind of soon that could wait until the end of the month, Harry figured.

A much more urgent soon was dealing with Draco's skewed sense of self and health and time. Harry quickly learned that even with a bladder painfully full, even that wasn't enough of a signal to Draco that perhaps he should stretch his legs, take a tour of his flat. That he would go eight, ten hours without pissing seemed impossible until Harry realized that Saturday that he'd done just that, literally not leaving the couch until Harry had noticed and forced him up, his face contorted with the sudden onslaught of pain once he noticed the pressure that had built inside him, the backlog making his kidneys sore. Like Harry, mornings seemed more manageable, and the day became more challenging as it progressed. Taking care of him was like minding a child, complete with reminders to get up and go to the loo, and forcing him to drink water. He had to be fought with to change out of the same singlet and jumper that he'd worn the day before and the day before that and the day before that.

He was fussy, slapped Harry's hands away on multiple occasions from the kinds of touch he used to crave. Foot rubs ended before they began, feet withdrawn underneath of him on the sofa. Casual shows of affection were pulled away from so expertly that sometimes he vacated a space before Harry had even fully formed the thought of _wouldn't it be nice to hold him a moment, to kiss that spot below his ear._ His was an ornery disposition, one that left him mostly exhausted at the concept of anything, or with enough energy to be unimpressed, underwhelmed, and unenthusiastic about the things that Harry knew to usually bring him joy.

And there was no sex, not even the intimation of it. A preponderance of baggy shirts were pressed into service as Draco's chosen pyjamas, and his pants stayed on overnight. He disappeared behind a shower curtain in the mornings before Harry could see much of him, so though Harry could feel the ridges of his ribs through his nightshirts, he didn't see them anymore, couldn't tell if there were fewer to count now that Draco was eating three meals a day again, even if they were picked at and pushed around and left half-hidden in napkins.

After five days of the routine, Harry left Draco alone for a night, a breather for both of them. He was sure of two things. 

One, he was going to tell everyone, shout it from the rooftops if he had to. _Harry Potter loves Draco Malfoy._ He wasn't worried about quitting the task he'd signed up for. Draco was doing incrementally better, even. Earlier that day, he ate something other than beans and toast and tea and oranges for the first time that Harry could remember, fixing a vegetable soup from scratch. Though he burned the rolls to accompany it, which was unlike him (both the attempt at baking and doing poorly at it), it was a marvel he'd tried to make anything to begin with.

Harry thought it probably had to do with the letter he'd received from the Ministry. It informed Draco of his start date in the Department of Mysteries, a date set in a little over a week, once Mordred was back in the office from an extended holiday break. The letter was formal, as though he were a wholly new employee in their system and not someone who'd been unceremoniously fired. Draco didn't bring it up to Harry, which meant they didn't fight over it—Harry only learned the news when he noticed the letter pinned above Draco's desk. And though nothing bubbled in his cauldrons, and no book spines had been cracked in weeks, Harry saw it as a positive sign, like a North Star for Draco to follow back to his version of normalcy.

He was in the pit with Draco now, and it would take the both of them scrabbling at the edges to make it out. Or, in this case, Harry would carry Draco on his shoulders for a while, for as long as it took. But saying the words meant something, held a magic all their own, and Harry needed to talk about what was happening to ensure that his reality was indeed real, and normal, whatever _normal_ meant.

That, and he knew that Draco needed to be dragged, even kicking and screaming, from his flat. Needed sunshine, though there was little of that on offer. Needed the warmth of the love of his friends around him, to be reminded how to smile, to be coached along until it was a skill he regained.

"I'm seeing Draco again," Harry announced. The words tumbled from his lips as he dipped his spoon into a melting mountain of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Ice Cream later that night, not needing to look up to know the expressions on his friend's faces. 

_This must be how it feels to be a new parent, or someone who's just adopted a puppy and to finally get a night off,_ he mused, realizing that he was overeating from the stress of being with Draco just as much as the stress of being away from him and he wished, dangerously, that he was with Draco rather than enjoying an easy evening in with his friends at Ron and Hermione's flat. Wondered what he was doing and if he was okay. He was working on his second helping of dessert already and wasn't precluding the possibility of a third.

Ron tapped his spoon against his bowl, and without looking up, said, "Since Dean's party then, yeah?"

Harry caught him flicking a look to Hermione.

"Let me guess," Harry said before swallowing a spoonful that looked Neapolitan and tasted like mint and apricot and almond, took his time before responding. "You owe Hermione because even though you guessed that I'd end up going home with him," he said, pointing the spoon at him, " _she_ bet that we wouldn't sleep together."

"That's good for you two," Hermione raised an eyebrow and made a sound, scraping the dregs of cream from her bowl.

"This is _so_ much info, and for the record, I _love it_." Harry shoved Parvati by the shoulder, and she rolled with the motion, standing up from the stool she was sat on to better levitate over the container of ice cream to the kitchen island. Luna and Pansy were canoodling on the sofa in the other room, though Harry was sure he wouldn't have to repeat this conversation for their benefit, as it was likely they already knew, or Draco would have a similar conversation with Pansy soon.

"Also you're close, Harry," Hermione said on a sigh, "Ronald here talked me out of the side bet, though I was toxically inebriated at the time, so I don't think that should count." Ron shrugged, and they shared a smile that didn't hurt Harry to see anymore. He frowned, though, waving his spoon in Hermione's direction.

"Let it be known that I kind of hate this, you two betting on my love life all the time. I feel like George's predilection for befriending bookies is turning you two into problem gamblers."

"How is it, then, by the way?" Ron ignored the barb and continued to feign nonchalance even though Harry could tell he cared very deeply about the subject at hand. "I know it doesn't count for much, and you're going to do what you're going to do in the end no matter what we say—"

Harry _tsked_ him. "That's not true."

Ron pushed away his empty bowl and tilted his head, giving Harry a look that didn't require the added, "Come on, it is, and it doesn't hurt my feelings to admit it. Just—did he apologize? Was he hopelessly incapacitated, frozen into an iceberg? Not that I'm hoping for it, but was he at least attacked by werewolves, or something?"

"Oooh, that _would_ make a good excuse for being a shit for a month," Parvati added. Ron gave her a wink before turning back to Harry, returning to a more serious tone.

"Forgive us if we're not convinced this is one of your better ideas, mate."

"Also, I must say," Hermione interjected, "the not sleeping together right off the bat part is prudent. There's more to a relationship than sex, you know." Parvati and Harry shared and look that earned them stinging hexes from Ron, albeit little ones.

"Harry, it would be poor form if after all that you went through, to take your word for it that he's not a fucking prick to you now."

"Why wouldn't my word be good?" Harry's question fell into a room of silence. "Honestly? I'm mad for him, but I'm not mad, alright?" Both Ron and Hermione were unwilling to say out loud what they were thinking; that when it came to Draco, Harry's senses weren't to be trusted.

"What happened between us wasn't usual, alright?" His tone was defensive, but he couldn't mend that. "He had a bit of an—er—like a break," Harry said, and then stopped himself. What was there to say?

"Like...a mental break?" Parvati held her spoon in her mouth, eyes round with interest, and Hermione stopped scraping, clearly hanging on his every word. What could he say of Draco's state? What should he let on—what was required, and what was an overstep? The hair on his forearms rose as his skin rippled with gooseflesh. 

"He wasn't himself, and wasn't doing well, and he wasn't talking to anyone, really." Harry rubbed at his arms as though it chilled, friction warming his skin. "It wasn't just me. But he's working on it now, and he's apologized, and I accepted. I believe him."

"Haz, I could write a novel with all the information that you're withholding. Out with it! There's gossip to be had here, and if you don't tell us, we're going to devise other means to find out."

"It's not my place to say everything," Harry gave Parvati his best _I'm sorry_ smile, and it placated her, though Hermione and Ron were staring at one another, having one of their side conversations that required little but movements of their eyebrows and twitches of their lips.

"Spit it out, you two," Harry said, and Hermione turned to him with a glint in her eye that spelt nothing good.

"Why doesn't Draco speak for himself?" She asked, and Harry could see then, where her train of thought was going and knew it to be too soon, and Draco's psyche likely too fragile to put on a good showing, but he couldn't protect him from everything, could he? He could bring the offer to him, and they could decide on it together, as equals. They weren't newly dating, not really, and he _knew_ them all already, and what was the worst that could happen, other than _everything_ , of course—

"Oi! Don't go fucking spiralling already." Ron's voice snapped Harry back to the present, just as Luna and Pansy joined them in the room, both of them emitting happy cooing noises to find sweets available.

"What's this the royal spaz is spazzing about now," Pansy asked. 

"A dinner party," Hermione said, then backtracked at the face Pansy made at her.

"Wait. Who's having a dinner party?" Pansy asked the room at large.

"Harry and Draco," Parvati supplied, tone suggesting that the pairing itself was salacious.

Harry groaned. "It's an idea Hermione is floating, it's the _idea_ —"

"Awe, that's sweet. Is that the naming we've settled on? Or should it be alphabetical, you know—Draco and Harry? Or perhaps we go by their middle names—" Luna started her usual audible wondering, and Pansy quieted her with a placating smile and the placement of a biscuit into her mouth.

"That's enough of that for now, love, we'll devise a gross little portmanteau for them later. But, we can't foist a dinner party on the poor thing, look at him." She gave a pinch to one of Harry's cheeks, as though he were but a chubby baby. "He couldn't possibly, it'd take him months to put it together."

"Alright then, what do you suggest?" Hermione was testy with Pansy, still, though it wasn't adversarial. The two matched one another for sheer dog-headedness, could put up with the others bullshit in ways others shrivelled up under.

"A party-party," Pansy said, and Harry groaned as though wounded. "Force that miserly prat to put on something cute, and you too, and invite us fucking over for a change. It's starting to be a whole Superman and Clark Kent situation, I've hardly seen the two of you in the same room at the same time since, since—"

"Halloween," Harry supplied, but that only drew questioning stares from both her and Luna and Harry quickly followed with a, "never mind," to keep them from prying into the details of that night and the ensuing morning.

"I hate parties," Harry tried, but the group only scoffed.

"Didn't you have your whole place redone?" Pansy asked, and Harry knew then that he was done for.

"You're inviting yourselves over for a party, then?" Harry looked around the room to shrugs and nods and calculating smiles.

"Exactly. The coming out party you never had," Pansy patted the top of his head, and Harry rolled his eyes to cover for the roiling in his stomach. "Just your's and Draco's best friends, mingling under one roof, enjoying each other's company and scrutinizing the shite out of your hosting skills. Easy."

"Sure," Harry puffed out his cheeks and dropped his head into his hands. "And when is this party to happen?"

"Friday?"

"Friday," Harry answered Draco levelly, trying to ascertain what the blankness of his look meant. They were in the bath, Draco sat in front of Harry, a slim paperback wilted from previous water damage pinched between his fingers. For a fastidious person, he was strangely fine with his books showing the depths of his love for them—they were dog-eared and filled with marginalia, including the novel he was currently re-reading. Harry had coaxed him in and it was easy, and nice, though Draco told him to close his eyes as he slipped into the foamy water. Harry was sure that the heat had gone to his head, clearly, if he was bringing up the threat of a party without Draco dragging the information from him.

"This Friday?" Draco closed the book, leaned forwards to drop it on the countertop and turned, his right hand on the island of Harry's right knee as leverage to twist his torso, so they spoke face to face. The low glow of candlelight was all that lit the space, turning the wisps of hair coming in at his temples and nape into filaments of gold. Harry's heart beat double to see him like this, shadows and light and flushed, pink across his nose and high cheekbones, and his cock started to fill out, would be noticeably stiff when Draco settled back between his legs.

Harry gave a tight nod. "Yes. I mean, it's three days away, which is plenty of time to tell everyone. It's what they suggested—we can push back."

He expected an eye roll, a scoff, a something, but Draco was quiet. He contemplated it, staring cooly at Harry.

"We could. What do you want to do?"

"Half of me wants to get it over with. It'll be awkward, but, may as well pull the bandage off now." Draco settled back into position, stopping for a second at the firm press of Harry's cock into his back, and then relaxing into it. Harry expected him to question the intrusion, but after a long silence, he surprised him.

"Kreacher is going to be furious with you."

Harry craned his neck back and let his laughter loose at the ceiling, the sound of it echoing back, the skylight a canvas of the blue-purple of orchids bleeding into the blackness of night.

"No, he's not, because I'm going to tell him it's a party _for_ you, the only person in the world I've ever known him to like."

"Other than his mistress," Draco said. He slipped his burned hand beneath the layer of bubbles and into the water below, pursed his lips and breathed. They watched as droplets formed and fell from his fingertips, a gentle rain onto Harry's newly exposed knee.

"True. Other than her, may she rest forever in peace."

Surprisingly, that wasn't the end of it. The conversation continued just like that, Draco asking about what they could do about the portrait, and how long the guest list should be, and whether Harry had any clue what was on offer from the wine cellar, and if the pantry had a refillable charm on any foodstuffs, and had he considered the need for vegan canapés, and so forth. It was a strength of his, Harry realized, inherited from a lifetime of not only attending but planning social events with his mother, and it was the first time he'd been even vaguely interested in a topic all week, any topic at all. They stayed in the water until each fingertip and toe was thoroughly pruned and the air at Harry's shoulders went from being a pleasantly cool counterpoint to the heat of the bath to a chill that we wished to escape. The bubbles had all popped, exposing Draco's naked form in the tepid water. It was the body he remembered, the tendons of his calves and ankles and feet stronger than they had been, articulated in such a way that when he curled his toes and then pointed them, Harry could envision how they worked together to propel him over asphalt and the floors of the dance recital space equally. He was hard in every place that Harry cared to look, as though anything extraneous had been chipped off; a body chiselled from a single block of white marble.

They towelled off as the water swirled down the drain, Draco stood near the sink while Harry stayed in the bath, enjoying the warm water as it slipped away past his toes. Draco opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle Harry didn't recognize, pouring a capful and knocking it back. His towel was around his neck, his body exposed in a long, slim line that Harry hadn't been able to enjoy the sight of in so long, and he didn't realize he'd been gawking until Draco called him out on it.

"Snap out of it, Potter."

Harry dragged his eyes away from the swell of his small, muscled arse up to his eyes, crinkled with amusement, one pale brow raised.

"Uh, what—what's that potion for?" A flush spread across his chest at being caught so obviously staring. At least his hard-on had flagged in the bath, and he wasn't stood with a hard cock and a stammering mouth all at the same time.

"My arm." He looked to it and took a deep breath, rubbing the wrist. "It's getting worse, or I'm getting soft. Either way, it hurts all the time now."

"We can make it better, you know." Draco looked to him with pursed lips, and the eye roll was next, or the barbed words and Harry held up a hand.

"Not fix it, I didn't say fix it. There are things, therapies. I've started using some products on my own scars, and they help."

Draco's brow furrowed. "Your scars hurt?"

Harry shrugged, stepped from the now empty tub onto the shaggy beige rug on the floor to rub the soles of his feet dry.

"Some. The one on my arm does, sometimes." He was quick to paint a smile on though. "Nothing like yours though, probably, it's barely a thing. I feel silly even, talking about it, I've never really—I didn't even mention that it scarred in my book."

"Who gave it to you?" Draco spoke quietly like Harry would startle otherwise. It was so different from how he was usually asked about his scars' provenances— _Where'd you get that one?_ —acknowledging that in Harry's case, they involved not just times and places, but actors. That his scars told the stories of things that had been done to him, not accidents and happenstance. Harry stared at it, so easily able to recall the ragged gash that had caused the long smooth line.

"Nagini. She got Arthur Weasley even worse."

"Don't do that," Draco said, "don't diminish it. May I?" Harry nodded, and Draco reached out, smoothed a finger down the centre of the stripe. "I hated that bloody snake," he said, lip curled in a snarl, and Harry could kiss him, wished even though it would have been impossible that they'd been something other than enemies when the blasted thing was alive and could have shared that hatred. It was refreshing to have someone else haunted by the same memories as he was, as dreadful as that sounded, and as much as he'd never admit so out loud.

"Which others?"

"This one," he touched the scar on his chest, "it gets tight. Less painful, more—uncomfortable. It's a burn, from Slytherin's locket."

Draco looked to Harry, and he nodded again, and he placed his hand over the scar and held it there. His palm was warm, and it looked nice, to see Draco's skin against his own, those long, spindly fingers scratching lightly at the sparse black chest hair growing from his unmarred skin.

"I'm sorry these happened to you," he said after a while, and Harry swallowed the want to brush him off, which is what he'd do if their roles were reversed. He made a sound of acknowledgement, felt bereft when Draco removed his hand and went back to scrubbing himself dry.

"I never admitted it before, but now that I do, I can also work to make it better. Ron's brother Charlie gave me some advice—"

"The dragon tamer," Draco said with a questioning look, and Harry nodded, surprised that he remembered.

"Yeah. You'll meet him one day. You'd like each other, I think."

Draco huffed, almost a laugh, at least a smile, and Harry relaxed to see it. His smiles were such a rarity these days that Harry counted each one and kept them, collected them throughout the day, sure he'd never take the sight of one for granted again.

"Enough talk of other people for one night," Draco said as he held out a hand, his eyes latching on to Harry's and refusing to let go. "Come to bed with me."

"Of course, only—"

"Ah, ah," he tutted, walking backwards and pulling Harry along with him until they were at the bed. Draco turned them so Harry's arse was level with the mattress and pushed him in the centre of his chest so that he fell back onto the neatly made covers.

"Close your eyes for me," he said, his voice low but demanding, and Harry did as he was told. He raised his hands above his head and gripped at the blanket, bunching it in his hands as Draco rose up over him on all fours, one hand snaking down his belly until it met with his shaft, rapidly stiffening under his touch.

"I've missed you like this, pet," Draco whispered directly into Harry's ear, and he sighed at the word, trained as he was to react this way when Draco said it. Harry wasn't sure if it was remembered pleasure or having sight taken from him, or the fact that the only thing between his being able to see or not was his willful submission, but as Draco made a loose ring with his fingers encircling his prick and gave the first slow pull of his foreskin down the shaft and then the languid, unhurried slide back up, he shuddered, twisting his face away.

"You're such a good boy like this," Draco spoke into the skin of Harry's neck, lapped a spot before sucking at it, marking him with bruises the colour of plums. His shuddering wouldn't stop, was like the reaction to being tickled, an unstoppable burst of energy that originated in the place where his spine met his brain, and it made Draco ghost more words of praise into his skin, tugging at his shaft without hurry, barely enough pressure, and it took nothing for him to have Harry panting, neck and back arched off the mattress.

"Did you miss this the way I missed this?" Draco edged down Harry's body, and Harry was trying to form the word to answer his question, but it came out garbled because all of a sudden the slit of his cock had something warm and wet pressing into it—he'd forgotten how devious the tip of Draco's tongue could be—and the word _yes_ was lost forever in his throat.

The tongue was good to Harry, lapped up the bead of precome that had formed and licked the ridge where the fat stopper of the head of his cock met the shaft, and Harry felt something give between his fingers—the fabric of the coverlet was ripping, he was tearing it between his sweating fists. Draco's mouth played with him, his throat and nipples and waist until Harry was panting not just breaths but words, _please's_ dropping from him in a litany. Draco's command that _yes_ , he could come _now, right now_ , turned the ball of hot energy in his belly into the recognizable pleasure of an orgasm, one that ripped through him so that he made sounds he couldn't control and curled up, torso taught as a strung bow as he spilt over Draco's fingers, his fist never slowing, refusing to stop until Harry pleaded with him to let go.

"Oh my _fuck_ ," he panted into the air, lost in the universe that existed only behind his eyelids.

"You can open your eyes now."

Harry did to a room that though dim seemed suddenly too bright, the white of the ceiling an affront to sensitive eyes. Draco fell heavily next to him, one set of long fingers seeking Harry's out and intertwining them.

"Yeah?" He said, and Harry placed the back of his hand over his eyes, jaw working as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Yeah. Yes, my god, I—" he broke off. There weren't words for how he felt in that moment. For how it felt to turn and meet Draco's eyes, to enjoy the upturned tip to his perfect nose.

"Save your breath. It seems like I may have just exorcised a piece of your soul through your cock."

"Feels like it," Harry agreed. He slanted a look at Draco, lowered his voice to a growl. "Trying to turn me back into a Horcrux, are you?"

Draco swatted at him, playfully annoyed.

"Stop," he warned through the smile threatening to form on his pouty lips.

"Do you want me to..."

Draco's own cock was flaccid, and if Harry had to guess, had been the entire time. Draco waved him off, a lazy gesture. 

"No." His eyelids closed peacefully, and he really did look perfectly satiated already. "I want chocolate."

Harry pulled the hand away from his eyes. "Yeah? I think we've got some downstairs."

"I don't want _candy_ , or whatever that rubbish is that you like. I want _chocolate,_ the proper kind."

Harry reached over and brushed the softest bit of skin between his waist and hip, trying for a tickle, earning him a slap to the offending hand.

"I know, your highness," Harry sighed. "There's dark stuff for you, and the cheap stuff for me."

"You're too good—"

"Now _you_ stop it right there. I'm not too good for you, I—I'm exactly good enough. We're good for each other, remember?" He pressed a kiss to Draco's shoulder and covered his eyes with the back of his hand again, not wanting for the moment to be broken by sadness. Like if he pretended normalcy enough, it would come into being around them.

Something about this sentence worked on Draco, who didn't descend into tears or prod Harry into a fight. Instead, he rummaged around in his rumpled trousers on the floor to find his wand and summoned a robe into his clean hand, Harry's come still wet on the backs of the fingers of his other.

"Right," he said, admiring the wet look of his messy fingers, "you're right. We are good."

He returned minutes later, tidied up, and the two of them sat cross-legged, moaning around the melting tabs of various confections on their tongues, the crinkling sound of the wrappers the only addition to the soundtrack. A thought came to Harry as the last bar was finished, and he rubbed Draco's shin.

"Hey," Harry asked, "what's your schedule like this week?" Draco snorted at the question, looked around the room as though to say _you're looking at it_ , but Harry remained quiet, so he leaned back onto his elbows, took the question seriously, sucking at the last of his tiny squares of bitter dark chocolate.

"Tomorrow's what, Wednesday?" Harry nodded, and Draco sighed, shaking his head a touch, the way he used to do to keep his hair out of his eyes. "Nothing. Well, not nothing—a run in the morning, and then, maybe I'll drop in on mum. I've been avoiding her for weeks. She'd like that, if I came over."

Harry gave a rolling motion with his hand, pushing him to continue, and Draco sighed brashly like this was a test and a boring one at that. He rolled off of the bed to shut the window, a cold breeze goose-pimpling his skin into a bumpy white range.

"Alright and then nothing. Oh, and it's _Thirsty Thursday_ ," he said, like that meant something to Harry, at whose incredulous look he sighed a third time and explained, "which means I have to water the plants, Mr Smart-Arse."

"Your plants are dead, Draco," Harry said.

"Oh," he replied, seeming genuinely surprised. "Well, then. Purchasing some new ones would be prudent. And I ought to come over to Grimmauld early, now that I think about it. Sit down with Kreacher and do some party planning. There are Muggle things we should think about getting, and what do you have to play music? And he'll need help with the shopping, no doubt, so perhaps a run to the grocer in the evening," he frowned at Harry's naked chest, "and then there's dressing _you_ , and that could take a good part of Friday day to do."

"And then what," Harry asked nonchalantly, hoping not to give away how thrilled he was that Draco was planning on doing _anything_ beyond lay still and in a daze. His heart leapt, beat furiously in his chest, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from beaming.

"Hmm. Saturday, nothing, though I really should get back into my old routine. Perhaps set up the lab again in the study. Oh, and prep for class on Sunday. I suppose I could go back to the gym one evening, especially if you're busy. I'm sure I've lost my middles—"

"What are middles?"

Draco scoffed, letting his hands slide down the coverlet until they came to the tear Harry had made in the fabric.

"Why are you enjoying this so much," he mumbled, and Harry only smiled.

"I asked first."

Draco rolled his eyes as he fumbled about for his wand, concentrated on the spell to mend the hole, both of them watching as each thread found its mate and rebound, spiralling into one another until no one would ever be able to tell there had been a tear at all.

"Splits. I haven't done any conditioning in ages, and—what's your schedule like, this week?"

Harry directed his smile into his lap, pushing at his cuticles with nails that, while pitifully short, weren't a complete mess. "Two meetings, both tomorrow. One is to see the space for the children's home, finally, over in Chapeltown. The other is right after, with Mr Sparks, to sign some paperwork. Other than that, family dinner on Sunday. And being wherever you need me to be." Draco looked to him, biting a lip. His features were well-schooled, face a wide blank. Harry couldn't help but add, "Trying to catch you at whatever it is you do to get your splits, because the thought of you so flexible is sort of _arousing_ —"

Draco pushed at his knee, a genuine smile on his face as he crawled up the bed to Harry, disrobing and slipping, naked, under the covers.

"Could you do the splits when we were in school?" Harry fiddled with the corner of a pillowcase, though Draco saw directly through him.

"That Slytherin tie is starting to look really good right about now, is it not?" He asked coquettishly, tongue licking between his bottom teeth and his lip as his eyebrows rose and fell. Harry squeaked, gave him away entirely.

"You can help," Draco allowed, "but only if you _actually_ help. If you break my concentration, I'll force you through my stretching routine with me, and you'd likely lose the use of your hamstrings, permanently."

"I'll be good," Harry said, slipping down under the covers next to him.

"You always are," Draco responded, brushing their lips together for the barest of kisses. Things were delicate, just then, on the brink of _normal_ —close, so close. Harry turned to face the wall, and Draco took this as the sign it was to cuddle up behind him, their breathing evening out.

"Stay in the morning," Harry whispered into the dark air minutes later. "Don't go, I—I don't like waking up to an empty bed. If you take the day off running, you could join me, too, in Chapeltown. We could grab lunch together."

It was tranquil a long while. Even while otherwise a wreck, his obsessive exercise was the part of his routine he'd clung to. And Harry could relate to how even the things that weren't fun, perhaps especially the things that were tiring and painful, at least if they were regular, they could feel like the only thing between _here_ and _there_ ; the world of the smiling, living, happy people, and the one of chaos, of questioning why to get up in the morning at all, and what was so interesting about sticking around for tomorrow, anyway?

"Would that make you happy?" Draco asked. Harry considered it, how he should feel selfish for making demands of Draco to satiate his own wants, and then he stopped that train of thoughts before it turned to words.

"Yes," he breathed, "it would mean a lot to me."

Draco pressed the point of his chin into Harry's shoulder, not to hurt, but to pull him close, the better to be able to plant a kiss to his throat, at just the place he knew that he liked.

"Alright, then. I will."

"Thank you," Harry said, and he wanted to add _I love you_ again, just to say it because he felt it so strongly, but Draco hadn't said it back, and Harry didn't want to push, didn't even need him to say it because he was sure that he felt it. Whatever it was that he felt when Draco held him, that had to be what love felt like, didn't it? So instead, when Draco murmured, "Goodnight," in his ear, and rolled away to pull a vial of Dreamless Sleep for them to share, Harry returned with "Sweet dreams," and drank his half, sinking into the bed as content as he was sure he'd ever been.

* * *

**Friday, January 16, 2004**

"Kreacher!"

Harry closed his eyes against the shrill tone of Draco's cry. It was perhaps the hundredth time that Draco had called the elf's name in such a way over the course of the day, and it seemed as though it made no difference if they were in the same room or completely separate floors when he did it. It grated at Harry the same way.

"Draco, you know you don't have to _call_ for him like that—"

"Yes, Master Malfoy, yes, Kreacher is here," the elf appeared with a _pop_ , eyes wide, near-manic, a full six-inches taller than Harry ever remembered him standing tall, the necessities of work doing incredible things to un-stoop his ancient frame.

"Kreacher, my good man," Draco started, smashing his lips together into a thin line as he concocted the softest way to deliver his message. "I had only just placed some carbonated beverages here, along this space, and they seem to have gone missing."

This was the game that the two of them had been at all day, a sort of cat-and-mouse, whereby Kreacher would find something he found too ostensibly Muggle and went about hiding it, and Draco, catching the absence, would call him out on it, and they would have a perfectly civil chat that did absolutely nothing to change Kreacher's behaviour.

"They was," Kreacher lowered his voice and looked over his shoulder, as though the very words would be an affront to speak, "in _aluminium canisters_ , Master."

Draco took a deep breath, leaning against the counter for support. With a lowered head, he tried once more to explain to Kreacher his wants.

"Yes, I realize this, Kreacher. And I know, yes, they are of Muggle branding, but the thing is that the master of the house and I wish to serve them to our guests this evening—"

At this, Kreacher gasped, and Harry, having pretended valiantly to be busy from the corner where he was puttering around with an old phonograph and an iPod, burst out laughing.

Draco gave him a look that could kill as Harry turned the laughter into fake coughs, rubbing the heels of his palms under his eyes to push away the tears of mirth running down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he pleaded, "I'm sorry! It's only—"

"Yes, yes, Potter, it's all hilarious from where you stand, fiddling with your, your _gadgets_ , but a party lives or dies on its refreshments, and," Draco turned back to Kreacher and crouched down so that they could see eye to eye, "I don't think I've been explaining myself adequately to you, Kreacher, and I really do need your help here. We both do," he added, giving Harry an imploring look, to stem further outbursts.

"I'm a pureblood. We're all aware of that." Kreacher bowed to hear this, and Harry let go of the firm grip he held on two bits of speaker wire, curious where Draco was going with this. "I'm Malfoy-Black, and that makes me partial heir to this house, and it connects you and me, Kreacher, in that you have a long history with the noble and most ancient house of Black."

"Yes, sir," Kreacher nodded fervently and then swept into a low bow, something he point-blank refused to stop doing, and so Draco just waited for it to end, rather than imploring him to stop. Draco looked to Harry, pointed directly at him.

"And Harry over there, Harry's a half-blood. He's a Potter-Evans, and he is the master of this house. Like it or not, the Muggle in him is just as important and valid as the pureblood." Kreacher started making a growling noise, and Harry was sure the whole conversation was about to end in a blowout, but Draco kept on talking over him, his elocution as posh and crisp as it had ever been.

"Between the two of us, which—let's be honest, our being together is already a bit of an affront to pureblood values—" he looked to the rafters, gathering strength from whichever god it was he turned to during his times of need and sighed, slumping into the stance he'd taken, "we're the _new_ House of Black, yes? Do you follow?"

Kreacher took a step back from him and looked to the towers of silver-gilt glassware, the ensign of a _B_ engraved in delicate filigree into each one. That anything about the lineage would change was an affront to his conservative values, and it was a wondrous thing, really, Harry thought, that Kreacher had managed to accept Draco the way he had. That he’d managed it even through the cognitive dissonance of the so-called purity of his blood being in such direct conflict with his sexuality and politics and about a hundred other things that the stodgy old elf generally considered non-starters. 

"We're ushering in a new age tonight, and we need your help to do it. It involves welcoming all sorts under this roof—Muggle and Muggle-born—"

Kreacher took another step back. "You mean mud—"

Draco stopped the word from exiting the elf's mouth with just a look, a look Harry knew all too well.

"I mean what I say, and the words I use are the words we use now, Kreacher. You know that." The two stared at one another until Kreacher cast his eyes to the ground, his lips moving quickly, but the words he whispered were so quiet that neither of his human companions could hear the diatribe. "This party means a lot to Harry and me. It's in my honour, in celebration of, my, um—" Draco looked to Harry again and then Kreacher did too, the looks on both their faces expectant, though Draco's telegraphed that he wasn't sure which lie to run with to get his point across.

"Our, um, union," Harry supplied, and Draco made a face that Harry could only shrug at.

 _What is this, a marriage ceremony?_ Draco's voice whispered in his mind and Harry pushed back,

_It was the first word to come to mind! It sounds official, just go with it._

"Yes, exactly, our union," Draco said aloud as Kreacher turned back to face him, worrying the corner of his newly cleaned toga between a thumb and finger. "It's paramount that we make a good showing of it. Consider this the reintroduction of the estate to the public. An evolution, if you will, to the modern House of Black."

"I see," croaked Kreacher, though his tone spoke volumes otherwise.

"Yes. And that's why we must have all the things our guests desire, Muggle or magical. To show that we're a strong house but also one that is with the times. The house was _jamais pur_ , alright?"

Kreacher made some grumbling noises, wringing his hands. As much as he hated Harry's cadre of friends, he adored Draco, would do anything to please him, and it clearly tore him up to agree, but in the end, the choice was obvious.

"Kreacher? Will you put the things back?" Harry asked. Kreacher grumbled more, a low, rumbly sound, and Harry threw his head back, exasperated. "Will you do it for Draco, _please_?"

That was the magic trick: _Draco_. To do it for blood-traitors and filthy, no-good people was unthinkable, but for _Draco_ —oh! Kreacher's watery brown eyes looked from Harry, then back to the pale face he loved, and he threw his gnarled fists in the air.

He roared before disappearing with a _pop_ , and Draco and Harry both let out great breaths.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Draco rolled forwards into a ball on the floor, "that elf is going to the death of me." Harry was heartsore at the sight of him—Draco Malfoy, endlessly chic, rolling about on the floor of his kitchen in a homely sweatsuit covered in dust and worn, fleecy pink house-slippers that he'd been hiding from Harry all this time making an appearance as he'd rushed about the house. Harry wanted to abandon his work and join him on the floor, press him into the stones, who cared when the guests would arrive?—but he stood and enjoyed the view instead, heart swollen full.

"Why don't you go get ready? I've got it down here," Harry asked, and Draco squinted at him but didn't fight it, just got up and, grumbling in his own way, trudged upstairs.

Grimmauld, in a word, looked marvellous. More than looking it, it _felt_ it, every element of the house in superb condition. The rooms didn't react but instead anticipated needs, the temperature and lighting just so, the entire space smelling faintly of eucalyptus and cedar rather than varnish and paint fumes, as it should have following such intensive repairs as it had undergone. Harry gave Draco the tour late at night midweek, and they'd walked the rooms, a look of wonder on Draco's face. It was like old times, only now the rooms had distinct names, and Harry knew all their tricks. The stone that revealed a private sitting nook if you rubbed it in the right spot, and that the white of the walls in the owlery and of the bedrooms was subtly different, because of when one would be in the space and which direction the windows faced. He'd even been granted access at long last to the cellar, a door appearing one day where door simply hadn't been before. It was stuffed full of so many more weird and wonderful and sure, sometimes ghastly Black family artefacts that it would be years yet before he went through them all.

"It suits you," Draco said, toasting Harry's warm bottle of coke with his mug of herbal tea. 

"I thought you might think it plain?"

Draco's expression compressed, wrinkling in around his nose. "Not plain, though it could use some more personal touches, those will come in time. It's charming, Harry, perfectly charming," like Harry himself was charming, the words making him blush. And now, with forever frozen ice in the sinks, dotted with all manner of drinks for their guests, and the long table from the kitchen levitated into place in the grand parlour, laden with finger foods and their favoured snacks, Grimmauld Place was ready for the first time in decades to openly receive guests. The rooms of the first floor were cosy, with comfortable furniture enough to sit at and some of it tucked away to create an expanse of shining walnut floors, inviting a good time. Harry was thrilled to be able to share the space he'd been able to resuscitate with Draco's help with his chosen family.

Everything felt _right_ , he thought as he ascended the stairs, knees protesting after too many trips up and down them all day. He was about to turn to head for the loo when he heard something from his bedroom. It sounded at first like hissing, and cold shot down Harry's spine, thinking it could be a snake, here in his haven. Harry held onto the superstition that thinking about things brought them closer to reality and for a horrible moment actually believed that by speaking Nagini's name aloud recently he had invited the awful beast back to life. Curious and fearful, he stepped closer to the room, and the floorboards didn't creak anymore, so that Draco didn't hear him approach.

"Why can't you just be _normal_?"

Not hissing then, but whispers that were meant for an audience of one. Harry pushed the door open, caught halfway in and halfway out the room and Draco didn't notice because the door didn't creak in its hinges anymore either, and soft music floated through the space, something dark and sexy that the WWN played for the younger set on weekends.

Draco stood at Harry's armoire, a hand on each side, gripping it as he argued with his reflection. He'd changed into clothes for the party, a dove-grey button-down shirt under a pullover of black cashmere, the cable knit pattern adding bulk to his thin frame. He wore the black jeans they'd purchased earlier that day, the tag still attached at the hip, and the sterling silver chain choker he liked, a touch of kink setting off an otherwise casual outfit and Harry thought dimly how he looked so put together in everything, a veritable model for what a little money and the sense of style that was all his own could do, and yet the face he wore was desperate, his right cheek an angry red that spoke to slapping that Harry had thought he'd stopped. Draco didn't model his own life well enough for the man in the mirror, somehow.

"Why can't you just be _happy?_ Be happy for once," he whispered furiously.

Harry stopped, caught in the moment, horribly torn.

_You shouldn't see this. He has every right to fall apart in peace, sometimes, if he has to. You should go, just go, back up before he sees you._

Harry wasn't immune to bouts of the same behaviours. He still developed a pit in his stomach when he woke to cold sheets, still carried around a voice that hissed at him that he wasn’t enough, never would be. The voice engendered the niggling thought that Draco might have left for good, this time, which was his mind's way of protecting his heart from the possibility of more pain than it was built to take. As much as Draco's running worried him, he knew that his own routines often fell closer to obsession than health, more about punishment than catharsis, and Harry didn't bring these up with his healer because he wasn't ready to let go of them yet—not totally. He was about to take a step back out onto the landing, and it would be easy—he could knock first and then enter brightly, and in doing so give Draco the space to pretend that he hadn't heard anything. But then Draco turned to face him, because even when he couldn't hear Harry's footsteps he had the uncanny ability to notice the timbre of his thoughts, and he crumpled in an instant down to the floor, hiding his face in his hands, so that the option to go on pretending was stolen from both of them.

 _No more secrets_. _No more lies._

Harry crossed the room in a few quick steps and knelt down, wrapping his arms around Draco's spindly shoulders as best he could. The angle was awkward, and Draco's face was hidden from him, so all he could do was speak to his scalp and plant an equally awkward kiss to the soft growth of white-blond hair coming in to replace what was left of his peach tipped locks.

"You know, I'd give anything for you to be able to stop hating yourself," Harry said, and Draco snorted into his knees.

"Well, it's a good thing that's impossible," Draco muttered. Harry rubbed at a shoulder and then stood, hand extended so that when Draco looked up and wiped away the wetness at his eyes, he could help him back onto his feet. Draco cleared his throat, and Harry backed off, peeling his grotty t-shirt from his skin and stripping out of his paint-splotched jeans, confident that if he didn't make it weird Draco would be able to forgive himself this lapse in his facade of being okay.

"You'd end up a pauper, and I'd still be embarrassing myself the world over," Draco went on. He sat heavily on the bed and watched Harry change into a new pair of jeans and a clean white t-shirt, sniffling. " _God_ , who cries before a party, anyway?"

Harry snorted. "You apparently." Draco dropped back to lie down, as petulant as Harry imagined a very young Draco would have been. It was so easy to imagine, vivid in his mind's eye that Harry considered that this wasn't such a new occurrence, after all. "I would have done too when I was younger if I'd let myself. The amount of social anxiety I used to have about these things is astonishing—have I ever told you about the lead up to my first Winter Ball?"

He spritzed on the new cologne Draco purchased for him—it reminded him of the smell of rain. _Petrichor_ , Draco had told him when he said that, ever-pleased with how the word sounded. _Pet-ri-chor_ , he'd said again, fingers slipping into his hand at they stood at the perfume counter in the centre of the shopping mall, enunciating the _pet_ for his benefit.

"Not helping," Draco groused.

Harry cleaned his glasses with his shirt's hem, which really only pushed the streaks around in new directions. "We do. Humans do. It's—well it's tiring, but it's better we do it sometimes than never at all, right?"

Draco shrugged, hands smoothing the sweater down his front in the nervous way of his. Harry fell beside him and stilled them with his own.

"You're going to be okay." He plucked the corner of the jumper from Draco's shoulder so that the seam fell where it was meant to. "This isn't a test—"

"Isn't it, though?" Draco asked acidly, tugging his hands away, and Harry was afraid that this would be the moment Draco had another catastrophic breakdown, and Harry wasn't sure he was personally prepared for how to deal with that.

"It's not meant to be. Remember the old plan?" He rubbed Draco's knobby knee, kicking a foot out and letting it bounce back and forth off the bed, nervous, covering for it poorly. "The point of all this is to introduce our friends to one another. That's it. And to come out from hiding behind these walls all the time. I've already met most of yours, and you mine. And yours are too scared of you to be rude, and mine are also too scared of you to do the same."

Harry waited for the joke to land, and let out a breath of relief when the corner of Draco's lips curled upwards.

"I wish you'd never seen me at my best," he said quietly. 

"Bite your tongue, and just—take it easy on yourself, love." Harry dipped his head, pressed their foreheads together, the better to give his best puppy-dog eyes. He wasn't so daft as to not know his stare's effect on people, Draco especially. "You don't have to impress anyone tonight. You're plenty impressive, just the way you are."

The little line of discontent was lodged in its usual place, and Draco's breaths came a little faster. He'd noticed the _love,_ as casual as Harry tried to make it, it hadn't been casual enough to keep from freaking him out, apparently.

"It would be helpful," Draco drawled, "if I could get your friends to trust me. Or, rather, at least to not hate me."

Harry rose, helped Draco to his feet. He snuck a hand down to his hip and ripped off the errant tag, earning a wry look of thanks from Draco, glad to avoid the faux-pas.

"Oh, well, you might as well forget that. Half the time, my friends hate _me_ , for being pig-headed, ignoring most good advice, and driving them half-insane. And who trusts pretty boys, anyway? You're far too good-looking to trust, to be honest—"

Draco swatted his shoulder, and Harry caught it, lightning-quick, pressed a kiss to the warm centre of his palm. He did it again with the added flick of tongue for fun, and Draco's breath hitched, and a distinct look of desirecame over him, decidedly indecent thoughts flickering through his mind. 

"You know I'm not wearing any pants under these trousers?" He licked his bottom lip into his mouth, the sharp little tooth biting it and he closed the space between their bodies, hips jutting forwards into Harry's. "Can't, not in trousers this tight."

Harry's whole world shrunk down to the warm breath he inhaled and the press of—

The doorbell rang, and they separated as though burned, a wonky smile spreading on Harry's face.

"Masters!" Kreacher called up the stairs, already sounding harangued. "Masters! Kreacher is to be getting the door? Or—Masters!"

"Yes, Kreacher! Please!" Draco yelled back. The moment was broken but not the promise of it. Harry touched his lips, the wild nature of that single kiss sending him reeling. He already needed everyone to arrive and then _leave_ , so that Draco could go back to kissing him that way, kiss them raw. So that he could unspool all those thoughts that Harry could tell had flickered through his mind.

"Later," Harry said, and Draco nodded slowly, dazed. "Stay here a while, I'll go see who it is. And before you forget, you left your signet ring, the one with the black stone—it's in the kitchen. I put it on the ledge with the soap. Take as you long as you like up here, as long as you need, really, there's no rush—"

"I love you, too." Draco interrupted him, eyes wide and bright. He looked like he might be sick, like a child come off a rollercoaster, not sure if they wanted to die on the spot or ride it all over again. "You know that, right?"

Both of them stopped moving at all, dual deer caught in headlights. Harry was surprised at the words sneak-attacking him like that—he thought it would happen one day, sure, maybe, but also Draco's family didn't say it the way the Weasley's did, and Harry could _feel_ it, so why should anyone feel pressured to _say_ it to him, nobody ever had to, he didn't _need_ it, wasn't going to ask for it—

"Right?" Draco swallowed nervously, and the hand-wringing was back, and his eyes so wide that Harry feared he'd start crying again, stood there in the centre of his room, and so he stepped forwards and took him by the arms, nodding on and on as he could hear guests clamouring about downstairs, no doubt being harassed by Kreacher about the wet state of their boots and jackets and things, and he dimly heard his name being called. He wanted to speak but had no earthly clue which words he needed, and so Draco started babbling the way he did when he was nervous.

"It's only that it's been so long since anyone's said it to _me_ , you know, and it's difficult enough to accept _you_ saying it the once and now here you are, dropping it willy-nilly mid-conversation, as though _Harry Potter_ telling me that he loves me isn't so patently absurd that the only logical reason for how this is reality is that I've fallen into a coma and I'm dreaming, that my life is a dream, but then I go and do something embarrassing and realize this can't be a dream, but it's also _definitely_ not a nightmare."

Harry made a noise and nodded, and Draco's look of alarm escalated, somehow, as he went very pink in the face and redoubled his grip on Harry, and kept blathering, only faster now.

"But I'd be remiss if I let you go on thinking I don't when I do— _obviously_ , I do, I adore you, how could anyone not—I mean _look_ at you, you're sublime, Harry, really, I love you so much it hurts to think about directly. I mean, you've broken me for other people, I, I—I feel badly about neglecting _myself_ because of how I can tell that it distresses you, and I want to remove all bother from your life, and I could stay inside with you forever if the world would let us. And now, after—well let's not dwell on the past, but I know now that if I lose you, I could hardly contemplate going on without you, and you said it yourself, you told me that you can't read my mind, so I'm telling you now that I love you, very much. Enormously, intensely, it's troubling, really. This is me, telling you, and for god's sake will you please say something?"

Harry swallowed and calmly placed a hand over Draco's mouth to keep him from continuing on.

"How very dare you," he said, his voice growling low and dangerous, "saying that to me right now." Harry thought that Draco's eyebrows had nowhere else to go, but he'd been wrong, his face the picture of distraught confusion. Harry pulled his hand off from Draco's mouth, a little _o_ of surprise, and pointed at the door.

"Now I've got to go downstairs and act normal when all I want to do is lock the front door—"

"Har-old!"

Draco's eyes flicked to the door, his look of alarm slowly fading.

"—and, _Jesus Christ_ , I don't know, tie you to the bed—"

"Harry! Come down here at _once_ and tell me what you've done to the place, it's looking _gor-geous!_ "

"—and goddamn you Draco Malfoy, for doing this to me, this moment of all moments, and today of all days."

Draco let out an enormous breath and smiled then, his brilliant smile.

"You started it," he said, and in that tone, like he wanted to fight about it, but the way kittens play fight, and they both went into the kiss at the same time and with far too much ferocity, so that Harry bumped his tooth on Draco's top lip. Draco pulled away wincing, Harry whispering fervent _I'm sorry's_ and trying to get Draco to stand still so he could heal the bump before it formed, and Draco covering his mouth with one hand while trying to shoo Harry out of the room with the other, whispering his own vehement _I'm fine's_ until he was cry-laughing, finally pushing Harry onto the landing and slamming the door shut behind him.

"There you are!"

Harry turned to greet Ginny, more nervous in that moment than he had been facing down a dragon as a teenager, or a madman as a child, because Draco Malfoy loved him, and no one could ever take that away from him.

"Here I am!" He said triumphantly, raising his fists to the sky before realizing that the exuberance seemed a tad insane and opting to lower them to a more normal, around the hips height, "and down the stairs we go! I'll give you the royal tour."

"Sure." Ginny gave him a wry look, gold eyeshadow dotting the insides of her eyes, a wicked cat-eye lending her an added dose of mischievousness. "I'd love to have a drink in my hand first. And one for Nev, too—something _strong_." She gave him a serious look, but Harry's enthusiasm for what it felt like to have the person you loved say it back burned off whatever remnants of uncertainty he had about the meeting of his two worlds. "Where is Draco?"

Harry gestured over his shoulder as he pressed a hand to her back and guided her towards the stairs. "Er, dressing, or, um, something."

"Or something? Is that so?" She hummed a sound, mashing her lips together to keep from laughing outright at how flustered he obviously was.

"Yeah, sure. Finding earrings, maybe? Or, socks, probably, I'm sure he needs socks. He's, um getting ready. He'll be down in a minute."

"Okay, Harry. For future reference, you can just say _getting ready_ when someone asks." Harry gulped, pushing his fringe back from his forehead and noticing for the first time that his brow was damp with sweat.

_Goddamn you, Draco, goddamn you straight to hell._

Luckily, Ginny was quickly distracted by the shining array of bottles of champagne and ale and fussy wines and familiar plonk on offer to keep her from pressing Harry about why he was sweating and nervous.

"By the way, what have you done to Kreacher? He was downright _civil_ , seeing me, my god! Did you threaten clothes?"

"I did one better," Harry said, grinning, jubilant, flying, on Cloud Nine, "I promised him if he was good, we'd get to keep Draco."

* * *

As far as parties went, Harry thought that theirs was better than the average. Good, even, perhaps great, depending on how you judged them. There was far less yelling than at the average party, and much more amiable talking, which Harry considered a plus. The crawling sensation that came over his skin when he walked into a packed nightclub never bloomed, as the number of guests was exact, a known that he could deal with, and the territory was his own, all the entrances and exits known to him.

The first wave arrived precisely on time and included Ginny and Neville, who very gamely accepted Draco's handshake and offer of a chat, the importance of which none of them would be quick to forget. Padma and Parvati followed, with Padma's latest secret boyfriend revealed to be a very tall Nordic-looking man with close to no English, leading to him being cornered by Luna and drawn into a conversation conducted in a language of her own making, as she decided that using a translation charm would be cheating. Luna had arrived with Pansy, Blaise, and Matilda, the Slytherins travelling in a sort of protective pack all night, as though to split up might invite attack from Gryffindors, or worse, errant Hufflepuffs. Ron and Hermione were properly late, as was their custom, though not quite so late as Draco's Muggleborn friends from uni, Cynthia and Desmond, a lovely couple a few years older than the rest of them who had gone on to complete master's degrees in the Muggle world. They tried and failed to hide their starstruck looks at Harry, which he found hilarious and Draco found absolutely mortifying. Luckily, it was their life in Muggle academia that was a topic of endless fascination for Hermione, who quickly pulled them into a quiet corner of the parlour and plied them with questions, nodding at anyone passing by and smiling, throwing up three fingers and a smile as her way of ordering the trio of them more drinks, refusing to give up her position on the sofa. Last in were Dean, and with him, Lee Jordan, who was working as a DJ at the WWN and quickly took over the playlist for the night, and Hannah Abbott, whom Harry hadn't seen since school, and was thrilled to learn would be taking Justin's position at Hogwarts within the month.

People mingled amiably enough, and cracked the windows as the temperature rose, cuffs pushed up, and buttons popped, the music incrementally growing louder as the scent of gillyweed wafted in from the back garden. Harry accepted Blaise's offer of "the best bramble this side of the Atlantic," and was surprised to enjoy drinking something other than his standard ale or whisky, though, after months of cutting back, he found that the single cocktail loosened his tongue and lowered his inhibitions considerably more than it would have done previously.

Things started off stilted—polite small talk of the flavour Harry was generally worst at. But with a little bit of time and a lot of alcohol in their friend's veins, people warmed to one another as potential tempers cooled. He and Draco remained glued mainly to one another's sides all night, but at some point, they'd split up. Once he extricated himself from a conversation with the Patil's about Valentine's Day plans that left him needlessly worried over a holiday Draco had thus far shown no interest in, Harry lost track of how long he watched Draco through the open doorway between the parlour and the sitting room.

He was genuinely concentrating as he listened to Ginny recount a story, one arm supporting the other, holding a pint glass of soda with sliced lemon near his chin, sipping at it and nodding on occasion. He didn't interrupt, smiled graciously, and Harry recognized the way he dipped his head when she cracked a lewd joke or intimated eviscerating him if he ever did Harry wrong. Harry knew that he was tempering his verbal barbs, lofting softballs all night to play nice and cut the tension.

"Now is it 'Ginny'," Draco asked, "or 'Ginevra', or 'Ms. Weasley' for me when I address you?" Harry drifted closer to them, the better to eavesdrop. Ginny was about to answer before Draco added, "You know, because I already call Ron by your family name, and things are about to get very complicated if I continue in that vein with you as well."

"Mmm, is 'Girl Weasley' taken?" Ginny shot back, "Or wasn't it 'She-Weasel'? I forget."

Draco didn't flinch, mashed his lips together and tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Yes, I never was terribly creative when it came to naming those I bullied. Poor Harry got Scarhead for god's sake."

Ginny snorted, tapping her wand at the buffet table beside and watching as a fresh Black-and-Tan was poured before her eyes.

"My mother calls me Ginevra, but most people call me Ginny, so we can start there," she said, then added with a threatening squint, "but my real friends get to call me Gin once we've traded embarrassments, so let's aim for that."

"Ginny it is," Draco inclined his head.

"I assume you prefer Draco to the Ferret?"

"Naw, I'm sure he accepts the Ferret, though that was child abuse now, wasn't it?" Ron swooped in, clapping Draco on the shoulder with a firm grip. "So we're largely rolling with given names, these days. I much prefer Ron to Weasley by the way—I hear my family name often enough at work, thank you very much."

"Ron, then, my apologies," Draco conceded as Ron removed his hand. Ron enjoyed his interjection a little too much for Harry's liking, in a playful mood, an impish smile on his face. Harry could practically smell the practical joke waiting for them around the corner and only hoped that it wouldn't be too compromising.

"Easy now," Harry warned from the hallway, but both Ron and Draco gave him withering looks to quieten him, unwilling to have him mediate their relationship to one another, and so he relented with a sigh. "All I'm saying is play nice. Please. For my sake."

"Does Harry call you Gin?" Draco asked Ginny while his eyes remained glued to Harry's, polite as could be. Ginny nodded as Neville slipped an arm around her waist, looming protectively behind her.

"He does, sometimes. Why?"

"One wonders what embarrassments you've witnessed that would lend that familiarity," Draco continued, and Harry groaned.

"Not fair, patently unfair! You can't gang up on me like this!"

Ginny sipped her drink, feigned thinking overly hard for an example. "I was there during Harry's _I think I fancy fanny, let's see how this works_ phase, so rather a lot," she said, which was enough to send Ron reeling from the room, his neck and cheeks turned the purple-red of beet juice, and Draco smirked, somehow enjoying the track of the conversation in a way that neither Neville nor Harry could. Harry met Neville’s eyes as he grimaced, something Harry could feel his own face mirroring. Neville, because he was not enjoying imagining Harry fumbling about with his fiancé, and Harry because he knew that Neville was imagining it.

"Come off it, you two. I should shut this whole thing down, it's obvious you shouldn't be allowed to talk to one another," Harry tried to pull Draco away to another circle of people, but he stood rooted to the spot.

"Harry, darling, _dearest,_ before we go, though, you _must_ tell us—what stories do you have of young Ginny here? There must be one?"

"Great question," Harry scratched at his chin, "I'm sure there are a few that are safe to share in present company."

The look on Ginny's face was priceless as she scrolled through a Rolodex of compromising situations that Harry had been privy to. As amusing as it was to see her face twist in horror, Harry was elated to hold Draco's eyes, eyes that genuinely seemed happy, knowing that though there would be awkwardness to come, and sometimes grief or anger, that if Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley could give one another a chance and hit it off the way Harry had known they _could_ , if only they tried, that things, one day, would be normal. This would be normal—they would be able to rib one another, and Draco would slot in alongside Harry's friends who were indeed his family, and Harry would come to know more of Draco's very secretive past, learn the names of the friends he rarely mentioned, peel back the layers until he was invited to know the Draco that existed at the core of the one that the world got to see. Harry could picture his future, and it was wonderful.

"...and that's when the Queen herself rides in on an erumpet, the traditional way of ending a trade in the midlands, and dear god man, you're going to have to get a hold of yourself before you drown in the pool that is Draco's looks."

Harry snapped out of his reverie, horrified that Blaise had said something, and everyone in the immediate vicinity was staring at him. Because Harry had been staring, practically been drooling all the while, staring, as usual, at Draco.

"How long was I..."

Blaise rolled his eyes, the only person who probably rivalled Draco in how haughty he could make the gesture. "I think you left your body at some point."

"Cool. Awesome, yeah, that's great," Harry shook his head, as scoffing turned to laughter around him. At least Draco looked pleased, popping a olive into his mouth and smiling around it.

"I'm, uh—I've got to go," he fumbled for the words, and Draco nodded at him thoughtfully.

"Yes, I'm sure there's something that needs minding in the kitchens," he said, as Harry veritably bolted for the stairs. He was thankful to find the kitchen quiet, most of the food and drink and good times to be had upstairs, only Kreacher toiling away in the far corner, too deaf to hear what went on around the corner. He worked on some baked good he was making in Draco's honour, to be served in three days time, apparently.

Harry heaved a great sigh and closed his eyes, thankful for the cool stone at his back. It was while virtually alone that he realized how much work it was to be surrounded by people, and he was glad to catch his breath, sure that the world upstairs would keep turning even without him there to guide it.

"My dear fellow, that was a terrible showing."

Harry looked to his left and found Blaise there, sipping at a royal purple drink of his own making. He was entirely too self-satisfied for Harry's tastes, but then again, Harry couldn't disagree with him.

"That bad, eh?"

Blaise tipped his head and swept into the room, regarding the overstock of goods piled around them.

"If Draco ever deigned to wear an apron, I'd say you were tied to its strings, but that's such an improbable image that I'll only say it's obvious that you're hopelessly smitten, and it would serve you well to continue looking at him the way you do, forever, because Malfoys mate for life, and—"

"—you'll remove my bollocks from my body should I ever break his heart?" Harry finished the sentence as Blaise turned to him, a dazzlingly white, toothy grin expanding across his face.

"Pans already gave you the grim warning, I see," he continued smiling and approached him, hands raised as though he might go in for a one-armed hug, though it luckily turned out to only be a friendly pat of his shoulder.

"You should get back up there and save him. It appeared as though Ron Weasley was setting up some sort of enchanted karaoke machine." Harry stifled a groan at the thought. It would be a prototype nicked from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, and therefore there was a strong chance that the thing would explode, or steal someone's voice, or, or—something.

"That's going to be a treat," he muttered under his breath.

Blaise transfigured an empty glass into a mirror to review his face. Apparently satisfied, he transfigured it back, then pulled a kerchief from his pocket and dropped down to buff out a scuff from one of his pristine black leather trainers. Apparently, it was hard work looking as good as he did all the time.

"Yes, well, Draco, the poor thing, can't hold a tune to save his life, and is being far too polite to refuse the offer of a turn at it." Satisfied with the look of his shoes Blaise crossed over to Harry and thrust a hand into the cabinet behind him, plucking out three cold butterbeers, passing a pair of them to him. He lowered his voice and leaned in.

"Also, if you could, get him drinking butterbeer instead of soda while you're at it." He winked like he was letting Harry onto a secret. "We've got to get him drinking his calories again."

He raised a knowing eyebrow to Harry, the first time even a second passed between them that felt truly serious, instead of the never-ending lark that seemed to be how Blaise sailed through life. Harry nodded, refusing to drop his gaze.

"Agreed. I'm doing what I can."

The clicking of sharp heels came down the stairs all at once as Pansy burst into the room. The new bob she sported was streaked purple, an acquiescence to Luna, and her overall look was a little bit goth and a lot scary to Harry, who recognized her as quite sloshed. Harry figured she was waiting for their conversation to end so that she could steal Blaise away. Harry looked to the butterbeers in his palms, figuring it was best to let Blaise know that he was trying with Draco, not ignoring the problem, but working actively to solve it.

"I'm sneaking twice the fat I normally would into meals, and keeping treats in the house. It's slow work to get his appetite back up, and with all his running—"

"You know he's purging your pretty little meals, right?"

Pansy swayed, earrings like miniature chandeliers that tinkled with the motion as she fell back, letting the wall take on the work of her weight. Blaise stalked up to her and pointed up the stairs.

"You. Out."

The word hit but didn't instantly make sense to Harry. It confused more than it shook him.

_Purge. To rid oneself of something violently. By force. Purging._

She twisted up her scarlet pout, pushing a lock of hair away from where it had swung and stuck to her painted cheek. Her eyes darted away from Blaise's face and over his shoulder to Harry, and it was clear from the look in them that she had more ammunition in her arsenal.

"You're not the only thing he's addicted to," she went on, her self-satisfied smile closer to a snarl. Harry noticed that there was lippie on her teeth, a rare mistake to his usual kempt facade, and this error struck him as worthy of contempt. He was stunningly angry with her, for thrusting this fact like a lump of coal down his throat. 

"Out." Blaise dropped the arm that had been pointing and out came his wand into his palm. In an instant he had it at Pansy's throat, leaving not a centimetre's space extra lest she sink into it. "Right now, before I lose my temper."

"I only—"

" _Out_. I don't want to see you until you've apologized, and not to me. To him." 

Blaise's tone broached no further argument, and Pansy complied in a huff, heels clattering back up the stone steps. Blaise turned around to Harry, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly between two fingers. 

"By your reaction," Harry spoke slowly, careful not to grip the bottles he held too tightly for fear of smashing them into little bits, "I'm going to guess that Pansy's telling the truth, and not being awful for the fun of it?"

Blaise turned and jabbed at the air, a boxer's move, growling. "Yes, the bint. We weren't to—not like this.” He went back to pinching the bridge of his nose. “Well, the kneazle’s sprung from the sack now, no point lamenting that we couldn’t be having this chat over scones instead of here and now. I take it you didn't know?"

Harry shook his head. His heart sank, but not quite as quickly as his stomach did. It was like it fell through his body, and he felt faint.

_There was something the matter with Draco, there is, there is something, and you missed it. What kind of fool misses it, where have you been? You think you're there for the people you love, but you're self-obsessed, you've been leaving him alone some nights and every minute you're gone, every day you spend—_

"Why don't you have a sit here with me a minute?"

Harry heard Blaise as though from a distance, reeling from the revelation.

When he looked up, Blaise was so close that Harry could make out the pores in his perfect skin. A chair was summoned, and Harry sank into it, grateful for something sturdy to hold him up.

"I am sorry about Pansy's behaviour," he offered, taking the seat next to Harry. "Her parents are getting divorced, and she's not taking it well, clearly,” he sighed. "Personally, I think sixteen is the cut-off for being allowed to get your knickers in a twist over _divorce_ , for heaven's sake. If you're lucky enough to make it to our age with your family intact—"

"—or alive," Harry interjected from between his knees, which Blaise snorted at. 

"Yeah, or alive, then huzzah for you, I say." He drummed his fingers on the table, and Harry could tell that he was watching him, his gaze hot at the back of his neck. "Draco said you had a sick sense of humour. I think I'm going to like you, Potter."

"It's Harry," he answered tiredly, pushing fingers under his glasses to wipe at his eyes. When he pulled them away and looked to Blaise, he was using the dark glass of the bottle he held to check out his reflection and fix the errant hairs in one eyebrow. 

"Potter?" He hadn't heard Harry, and Harry didn't care enough to correct him again. "I know that was a rude awakening, but you've got to snap to it, alright? You've got a party to attend to, and Pansy's outburst doesn't change anything about how the next few hours go. Honestly, if I were you, I wouldn’t bring it up at all till you’ve had time to gather your wits about you. Pansy will have fucked off if she knows what’s good for her."

Harry’s mind raced, trying to fit puzzle pieces together, but they simply weren’t there. He hadn’t guessed because he’d never noticed the signs, or had, but assigned them the wrong meanings.

"I knew something was wrong and I didn't see it", Harry spoke to his knees and then clenched his jaw and breathed, in, hold, out. This was one of those scenarios he most wished to protect himself from—knowing that if he’d been better, faster, stronger, that he could have helped. As many times as others said it to him, as much as he sometimes gave himself the pleasure of indulging the thought, deep down he still knew his purpose was to save others. To help those more in need than he was, and that was everyone and anyone. There was a moment when he thought he'd be sick, but it passed in silence.

Blaise sighed heavily, uncapped his bottle and took a deep swig from it. "Don't be too hard on yourself. We're not sure, but," he took a sliver of ice into his mouth and cracked it with his molars, "it's the best guess. We only know he used to because Moaning Myrtle has a fat mouth. We lived with him for _years_ and didn't know. Draco's secretive, and he's good at what he does."

Harry barked one unhappy laugh. "That he is. But I should have seen it. I've been looking for the thing, I knew, I _knew_ something was wrong."

A queasy tide rose in Harry as something Blaise said clicked for him and he let his head fall between his knees again, hands at the back of his head, gulping deep breaths.

“Since school, then? _Fuck._ ”

He heard an incantation and felt Blaise's cooling charm send a chill over him, helping more than he could have imagined.

"Potter, my good man, honestly? Honestly? The best, happiest we've seen him in years has been during this whole clandestine tryst he started up with you. You've got to understand that you're not what makes him better, or what makes him worse, but that he clearly has an easier go of—I dunno, _life_ , when you're around. He'll get better again with our help. Has before, will again. Don't go beating yourself up over this though, or so help me Merlin I'll—I'm not sure what I'll do, but I can guarantee that it will be unpleasant."

That was enough to bring something of a smile to Harry face as he sat up straight again, butterbeers abandoned to the table as he removed his glasses and pressed the heels of his palms deep into his closed eyes.

"I feel like he was doing great until he met me, and now he's soaked up all my, my _shit_ , and I don't know how to fix it." Harry looked to Blaise, blurry without his glasses, but could tell that he was being given a knowing smile. He took Harry by the bicep and gave him a bracing squeeze.

"Don't bother thinking about it that way. Draco's never met an unhealthy coping mechanism he didn't like, and some of them have a way of sticking around longer than others."

"Are you calling me an unhealthy coping mechanism?" Blaise snorted again, flashing his perfect grin at him.

"An obsession, perhaps, but a coping mechanism? No, not at all. Food's his oldest safety blanket—alcohol and drugs, they're new on the block. Makes them easier to kick, I think. Mostly he seems like he's sailing through life, and everything's perfectly in order. But more often than not—" Harry replaced his glasses as Blaise tipped his head back and forth, considering, "—when everything seems fine is when something's wrong. He likes it best when everything _seems_ fine, so we stop turning over the rocks in his garden, so to speak.”

Blaise squinted at him.

“You two should talk before I say much more. Don’t rush it, but soon, you know. Push him a bit. Don’t assume—make him answer the questions you need answers to. He needs a helping hand at the moment, that's all."

"Thank you," Harry said. He was going to say more, but who else but Draco loafed down the steps, one hand clutching the corner of the wall as he swung into the room, a broad, easy grin erupting to find Harry and Blaise sat there.

"There you are!" he exclaimed. "I can't believe you _actually_ came down here, darling. I was only joking."

"I like it down here," Harry started to defend himself, but Blaise was too smart to take the bait and sidestepped Draco's snark instead.

"Here we are," Blaise stood and very quickly pulled the soda from Draco's right hand, replacing it with a bottle of butterbeer, "and there you go."

"What's this for?" Draco asked him as he continued over to where Harry remained sitting. For the first time in months and months, Harry imagined the dark feelings he had as a writhing mass, beetles and snakes, moths and worms, and he placed that mass into a box and shut the lid, then locked the room where the box was to be left in the dark. Not forever, but for a while, long enough that the puzzlement on Draco's face wouldn't turn to worry because for once, he wouldn't have the buzzing of Harry's thoughts to judge his emotional state by.

"I'm fairly certain that at least one of your boyfriend's friends is going to raise a toast when you two deign to rejoin us upstairs," Blaise lied easily, "and it's bad luck to toast with water. Everyone knows that." He didn't even bother to let his eyes dart to Harry's to check that he was going along with the lie.

 _He's good at that_ , Harry thought, dimly, watching as he crossed the room, stopping with one foot on the bottom stair.

"I expect you two upstairs, volunteering yourselves for karaoke within three minutes," he said, and with a stern look, he was gone.

"What were you two talking about?" Draco asked, sitting primly in Harry's lap. It shouldn't have been as easy as it was for Harry to clink their bottles together and nuzzle in for a peck of his lips, to smile and say, "Nothing but terrible things about you, of course," and Draco scoffed, his breath light with the scent of lemons. But it was easy because sometimes life demanded that he grin and bear it, to keep secrets, even just for a little while, even from the ones he loved most.

* * *

It was late, Kreacher long gone to bed, when Harry collapsed onto the new sheepskin rug in his bedroom, arms flung out to each side, and felt gravity's pull in of every bone of his body.

"That went well," Draco said as Harry let out an exaggerated yawn. Harry watched as Draco scooted towards the edge of the bed and threw a cashew high into the air. Rocking back, he expertly caught it, hummed happily as he chewed. Harry had long since stopped counting how many cocktail nuts he'd managed to capture in this way, though he continued to watch because he liked to see the long column of Draco's throat exposed each time he tilted his head back to do so.

A contented sound escaped him. Harry was happy to run the backs of his fingers over the soft fur beneath him. Physically, he was spent; emotionally, on hiatus. Everything could wait till tomorrow; the dishes in the sink and the detritus of the night on the tables, and the news that had pulled the curtain back on Draco's oldest secret.

_One of. One of his oldest secrets. You love him, and you barely know him, because he still, after all you've been through, still, he barely trusts you._

"You did well, pet," Draco continued, and Harry folded his chin down to his chest to look at him again, saw him catch a peanut this time. He chewed it, watching Harry thoughtfully from behind those serpentine eyes. "You've been very quiet," he added, "is something the matter?"

"Nothing that can't be dealt with tomorrow," Harry hedged his answer, and then let his head fall back, eyes closed against the warm orange glow of the fire blasting in the grate. The room was uncomfortably hot, and in combination with the warmth of the rug, he wished he were naked, between cool sheets, and on his way to sleep already. "I'm just tired," he added.

"You know, if I hadn't rigged the song selections, I would have ended up singing a torch song for you," Draco said, brushing salt from between his palms.

"What's a torch song?" Harry asked, and was glad to get a cheek dimpling rather than an eye roll.

"The kind of saccharine song that one sings about unrequited love."

Harry pressed up to rest on his forearms, confused. He was sure that Draco's words weren't meant to hurt, and yet they did.

"It's not unrequited, though," he said, and Draco huffed, looked to the ceiling.

"Alright, not in this case,” he frowned, grabbing his foot and massaging it, though it looked like it hurt more than it helped. “They’re expressions of devotion—like, like—Patsy Cline crooning. They're the saddest, loveliest songs, and that's what I would have sung, but I couldn't bear to do it in front of all your friends,” he sighed, the frown deepening, “and that's why I sang a silly pop song that you could tell wasn't about you." Draco was avoiding Harry’s eyes as he realized this was something of an apology he was trying to give. A roundabout way of saying ” _I’m sorry I didn’t go for the public display of affection,”_ which Harry found touching, even though it was a shit way to apologize. Draco pushed his toes down one at a time until the joints popped. The big toe's length was bruised, the nail the purple of dying violets, with mottled greens and yellows running down to the arch, a bruise Harry couldn't remember him getting.

"Why do you think I'm upset about that?" Harry lay back, pulled his knees to chest and held the pose. He needed a massage to release the tension he'd been carrying in his everywhere for weeks. 

_Or a fuck._ Perhaps he'd sneak out of bed later for a wank, or could convince Draco to go to bed without him and could soak alone in the bath, could unpack that box of feelings that he'd set aside. Now was later, wasn't it?

Draco was silent, so Harry continued on. "I won a tenner off Ron from that song."

Draco groaned as he popped the joint of his bruised toe. Harry wasn't sure if it hurt in a good way or not, but Draco took a deep breath and then cracked an eye open, staring at him. 

"I could tell you wanted me to sing a song for you, and that’s fine. To want." He let the foot go, and Harry forced himself to look into his face rather than at that bruise, a manifestation of some pain he wouldn't share unless pressed.

"I will if you want me to next time. But I wasn't about to do it for Weasley's—Ron—for _Ron's_ pleasure."

It was true that Draco's song had taken Harry by surprise. The apparatus had various settings; most notably, it could select songs based on the chosen singer's mood and thoughts. The less salacious options included that it could toggle between any Muggle or magical song selection that the user was aware of, pair songs with people based on vocal skill, or could possess the body and force them to sing a song they didn't know. 

"That's a feature we _won't_ be testing out tonight," Ron grimaced as he turned the last dial on the console off. It was clear that the crowd expected Draco to sing a love song to Harry, and Harry to Draco, but Draco had instead sung a song that was clearly about an ex, about poking needles into voodoo dolls and hoping that the person was wandering the streets alone. It had felt like a light bit of fun, more of an in-joke _fuck you_ to the shape of Noah than anything else.

"I didn't want you to sing me a love song," Harry said, releasing his legs and returning his arms to the position of the cross as though crucified to the rug. Draco didn’t look convinced, but it was the truth. "Really. I think I'd die from mortification to have to stand in a room while someone sang me a love song, actually."

"Noted," Draco said. He smiled, pleased to have misread Harry’s feelings. "You took a bet that I wouldn't sing one to you, though? How could you be so sure?"

The question felt like a trap, but it was Harry's turn to grin. "No. I didn't take that bet. I know you—I knew you could outsmart the charm on the blasted thing. You’re a bloody good Legilimens, and even if you felt like shit, you'd be able to sing a nursery rhyme about sunshine and baby rabbits or whatever you wanted. But I _did_ guess that you'd go for the high notes. Ron thought you'd save face, but I," he fished the ten-pound note from the back pocket of his trousers and tossed it on the floor, "I knew you'd give us the dramatic showstopper we didn't deserve." 

Draco made a contended noise, and they remained in companionable silence for a while, the only sound the crackling of the logs in the hearth. They didn't talk about how Harry hadn't sung a song at all, honestly terrified about what would be revealed, as he remained one hopelessly drifting through life with his heart on his sleeve, so Draco liked to remind him. 

Then Draco cleared his throat. "I read all of your notes, you know."

The statement knocked Harry's breath from his lungs like a punch to the gut. The notes, oh, those fucking notes. Words were never just words, were they? They were terrible in their power. His fantasies, wants, dark desires, childish dreams—what had he thought when he'd parcelled them up and sent them to Draco?

_What do you call that?_

When he looked again, Draco regarded him with his head on a tilt. He placed his hands wide to each side, leaned back, and tilted his head the other way. Like a hawk, watching. Harry, the mouse. The way he observed him fast became heated, its own form of touch and Harry's body reacted to it as such, coming alive.

He licked his lips, biting the bottom one. "I had favourites. Do you care to know which ones I liked best?"

"Yes, please," Harry said the words and Draco smiled, slow and languid, and when he stood and peeled his jumper off, Harry recalled the promise of what the night was meant to hold for both of them, the promise that had started with a fumbled kiss and a declaration earlier in the night. And he thought of the note at the bottom of the pile, the one intended to be read last. The pit at his core, what was left after his flesh was torn away. The thing he wanted more than anything. 

_I want—_

"The ones I like best are the ones where you talk about devotion." His voice was deep, a rumbling thing as he removed the buttons to his shirt from the buttonholes one at a time. 

"About giving up your own desires. Giving over, giving in."

_I want to be—_

It was only a few steps for Draco to stand at Harry's bare feet, and he knelt down, knees on either side of his calves as he removed his shirt, turned to fling it on the bed.

"How your favourite part of every day is when you get to make my tea because you get to steal glances of me naked in bed, and you live for how happy I am to watch you serve it to me." He tapped the hem of Harry's t-shirt and gave a jut of his chin that meant _off_ , Harry understood, and so he removed it without preamble.

_I want to be your—_

"But also, pet, I loved to read about how sometimes you like the feeling of being used. Like when you could be anyone—when you get to be a thing, different than who you are, trapped in a body. Do you remember those?"

"Yes," Harry breathed, and Draco came over him on all fours, and he was trapped in the vice of his own devising. Could it be called _trapped_ , when the feeling he got when Draco took control from him with a well-placed word in just the right tone made him float, made his heart sing? When the feeling was of weightlessness, transcendence?

Draco trailed his fingertips of one of his hands down the planes of Harry's face, and Harry's pulse erupted at that touch. His cock was filling out a little more with each pump of blood through his system, but he was still, his only movements those to say the words to answer Draco's questions, and to breathe, to swallow. All of them like automatic functions, now.

His very last note had been simple, no preamble, no context.

_I want to be your body. Yours. A body, to use. A body for you. Your body, to use._

"Yes, what?" Draco asked. Harry licked chapped lips, was quick to add, "Yes, sir," and it was perfect when Draco smiled at him like that, hand cupping his jaw. His mouth opened without reason—it wanted, and so it did. Draco slipped his thumb into it, an invitation. It was a gesture that demanded 

_suck_

and so, he did, tonguing the grooves around the nail and sucking it in, down to the joint. The sucking like a promise, his mouth saying _look what I can do_ without saying anything at all.

"Would you like to be my plaything for a little while?" Harry hummed around Draco's thumb, his world shrinking down to the island of white fur and heat where they existed, the wet place where his mouth was, where Draco's thumb pressed against the slithering muscle of his tongue, but he was in his body still, thrumming.

"I'd love for you to be my toy tonight. Would you like that, pet?" Draco removed his thumb from Harry's mouth, and Harry nodded, his voice throaty and deep when he answered with the entirety of the vocabulary he'd need for as long as their play lasted, 

_Yes,_

and

_please,_

and

_sir._

"Beautiful, you're so beautiful, aren't you?" Draco murmured as he moved down Harry's frame, deftly undoing the clasp to his belt and then tapping at his hips to get him to lift up, pulling his trousers and pants off in one long sweep. Harry looked down the length of his now naked body, his cock dusky as blood filled it, hardening against his stomach without requiring touch. 

"Wait here for me," Draco said, and then he was gone, off to the en-suite, the door clicking behind him. Harry arched his neck as far as it would go, the back of his head drawn towards his spine so that he could lose himself in the show of crackling red and carbon black of the fire behind him. He was stuck there, suspended in thought, left wondering if Draco felt the need to purge the handful of nuts he'd eaten or if his reasons for leaving the room were innocent, as innocent as whatever carnal desire he was currently planning for could be. He wished that all of the new worries zipping through his mind could be placed in the box where he'd hidden his feelings earlier but knew that they couldn't, or they'd spill over; he could see how it would happen in his mind's eye—the arm of something slippery—an octopus, perhaps, a negative thought with eight dreadful alternate endings forcing up the lid on the box until the little anxieties could creep out, like so many centipedes. A thousand hairy legs attached to the bodies of a hundred evil thoughts would come to him in a flood, and he'd be back where he was last summer, overwhelmed and useless to help anyone, blacking out on his rooftop and wishing that he'd fallen off the side in the night. And so instead he breathed and tried to lose himself in the fire.

Harry lost time, though it couldn’t have been more than a handful of minutes before Draco returned, his footfalls steady on the hardwood. Harry propped himself up, admiring Draco's nude form as he approached. His cock was so hard that it bobbed when he walked over and brushed his stomach when he knelt beside Harry, a sight that never failed to make Harry's mouth water, and his mind quieten.

"How—" his voice cracked around the word.

"Spit it out." Draco gave him a crooked smile, sly as all get out. In one hand he held a bottle that Harry didn't recognize, black with a shiny gold label.

"How do you want me?" 

"Just as you are. Relax," Draco said as he swung a leg over his hips and sat on Harry's stomach, though most of his weight remained in his own legs. The bottle was placed to his right, and Harry assumed it to be lube—an upgrade from their usual spells—and then Draco pressed a finger under his jaw, inclining his head back until he was staring at the ceiling. Shadows leapt and danced up there, black and gold playing across the surface, reflections of the fire that burned so near to them and inside of them, that molten energy just under Draco's skin.

"Now pet, you don't have to do anything at all. That would please me so much if you would be good and lie here and let me take all the pleasure I want from your body. The only thing for you to do is to answer my questions when I ask you to, alright?"

"Yes, sir."

Draco leaned forwards and murmured more words and Harry had to close his eyes, all his concentration focused on the buzzing feeling that happened when Draco's words pushed out of him and into Harry. 

"Seeing you as you are tonight, so strong, and so beautiful, so obliviously kind—it drove me crazy." Draco reached down and placed Harry's cock under his own so that the subtle ministrations of his hips back and forth created a delicious slide between them. Little sounds caught in Harry’s throat and he swallowed them, trying to maintain control even as it slipped away from him.

"I'd look up and see your eyes following me from across the room, and I'd lose my train of thought, that's how green they are." Draco licked his lips, staring down at Harry, his breath hitching on an especially long slide up. "And to think, they used to bother me, because I couldn't stop thinking about them, not at night, certainly not while I touched myself—"

Harry gasped at the added feeling of fingertips, nails precisely long enough scratch into his scalp as Draco gripped a tuft of his hair tightly. 

"—I can't count how many times I've come in my life just to the thought of pulling your hair, and now that I can, how is it that the real thing is better than the fantasy? We look so good together, pet, I wish you could see how perfect my hand looks, knotted in your hair like this."

And then Harry couldn't be sure that what was happening was real anymore when Draco repositioned so that his thigh slid between Harry legs, his body a fiery mass on top of Harry's, the thigh presenting something for Harry grind against. And Draco's cock was insistent, the head bumping into the skin above his hip, stamping precome into his skin. 

"Don't move, darling," Draco whispered into his ear, and Harry stopped his grinding, found that it was even more charged when Draco's hips were the ones to circle and graze his most sensitive skin. 

"I've wanted you so badly, and now I have you." Draco held his face next to Harry's, the better to whisper directly into his ear, lips close enough to kiss and yet a million miles away from Harry turning to capture them. "What I need now is to get my toy good and hard for me to play with."

Harry's whole world turned to the electric feeling of where Draco brushed his skin, his body jolting when an unexpected kiss was placed at the joint of his jaw and throat, or a lick at the shell of his ear, a breath warming it. His eyes shot open when something slippery wet and hot slicked his shaft. He bolted halfway up into a sit, and there were Draco's eyes, grey as the feathers of newborn birds, gentle in a face that was otherwise so sharp, blinking at Harry.

"Shhhh." He shushed Harry back until he lay flat again, and Harry had to turn his face away and bite his cheek to keep from writhing around at how _fucking_ good it felt, Draco's fist squelching lube, making a tight hole for the head of his cock to pop through and then spreading the liquid down to the base, and back up again. Harry's face scrunched up as though pained, though he loved the slide of it, Draco's palm and fingers gliding along him like silk.

"Mmm, I love seeing my toy all wet and shiny for me," Draco purred, and Harry groaned. He wondered very dimly when those wet fingers would wander around to his hole, and if maybe Draco would lick him open, and then the hand wasn't moving anymore, just holding his cock up at a right-angle from his body. When Draco looked him in the face, Harry parted his lips, begging for Draco's to slant over his, for that tongue to explore his mouth as he fucked him. But Draco had other plans, looked downwards instead, into the tableau of his own lap. His lids were heavy, lust clear in the way his gaze dragged down Harry's body.

Harry gasped and curled his fingers deeply into the fibres of the rug, holding on for fear of falling through it because the head of his cock was being pressed to the unmistakably hot entrance to Draco's body, and he wasn't prepared for _this_. Though Harry stared directly at him, Draco wasn't looking at Harry at all, so Harry could only see the crown of his white-blond head and the twinkle of silver at his throat, and drink in the deep huffs of his breaths as they both watched the purplish stopper of his cockhead held between Draco's legs.

"And to think, other people have to go out and _buy_ toys to stretch them out," Draco said, a breathy laugh escaping him. He nudged Harry's cock to his entrance and swiped the head over his hole again, and again, and again, until a spurt of precome dribbled out and he giggled, delighted at the sight. "I've needed to sit on your cock all night," he murmured, giving it a few more strokes, and Harry had to remind himself to _breathe_ , he ached for what came next so badly.

Draco hovered there, braced with one slippery palm wrapped around Harry's hipbone for leverage, Harry's cock held straight in the grip of his other hand and then he pushed down onto it, enveloping the head on Harry’s gasp. 

Draco groaned something incoherent and stopped, both hands scrabbling to the centre of Harry’s belly where the fingers buckled, as though he were trying to take scoopfuls of Harry with him. He made a little sound, the kind of breathy mewl that one might make when jerking off and trying to be quiet about it, only Draco was never quiet. It was astonishing because Harry felt, in a way, that he was watching Draco have a private moment. It was like Harry was both there and not there, and this was Draco’s way of showing him how _he_ liked it when he was in charge, when he got to use Harry's prick how he liked, and it was breathtaking, how the lines of tension in his body relaxed into it as the stretch brought him the pleasure he'd envisioned. He canted his hips forwards, tilting his pelvis so the angle was better and through a combination of gravity and force deepened the breach, sliding slowly, slowly downwards.

"Perfect," Draco breathed, and Harry watched, silent and enraptured as Draco rode him. He took it agonizingly slowly, arching his back and bearing down, as even with the copious lube and what little prep he'd managed before they'd started, there was resistance. Inch by inch he dropped onto it, until his balls were resting against the black fuzz at the base of Harrys' cock, all of it inside Draco's body, so hot and tight that it became unbearable and all at once Harry couldn't contain himself anymore, the sight of being taken in by Draco's body too much to take in the silence, and he groaned along with him.

"What a— _fuck—_ perfect, toy," Draco panted out as the muscles in his thighs tightened and stretched to raise him up and then he sunk heavily back to the bottom and rested there. One hand snaked its way up to Harry's chest, the thumbnail flicking a nipple a few times, until Harry hissed, the sudden urge to hold Draco by his hips and fuck up into his almost debilitating in its urgency. He _could_ , but all the same, he absolutely couldn't, because he was glued in the position that they'd started in, and he was a good boy, a good pet, a good toy. When he did as Draco told him to, this is what he got in return—ecstasy. Draco's other hand reached back, and he dragged a finger around the puffy rim and the slick, hard shaft where they were joined, and Harry's entire body went taut, and he wasn't sure what would come next. When Draco finally stopped the gentle brushing touches and looked up to Harry, he smiled, euphoric, like he'd completed a fantastic trick.

"I love you like this," he said. Harry leaned up and Draco stopped moving completely, tilted his head.

"What is it you need, pet?" He asked, and Harry made a desperate little sound. What was it that he wanted, other than anything Draco would give him? Other than oblivion at his hands?

"I'm thirsty," he said, and it was true—he was parched, bottom lip dry and cracked. Draco smiled so wide, his teeth gleaming and eyes glowing, tinted gold by a trick of the light now rather than silver, as he hovered over Harry and pushed in the sides of his cheeks.

"Open," he said, and Harry did, his mouth a pout in the shape of an _o_ , and then Draco puckered up and spat into his mouth, letting his spit drop the distance slowly, and Harry’s eyelids fluttered shut. He hadn’t thought to be spit on—not on, _in_ —hadn’t considered it could feel not like degradation, but care. To be, in a word, possessed.

Draco leaned in and captured his mouth with his own like he too was parched for a kiss. Harry groaned and groaned and Draco pulled back, whispering, "Better?" and Harry moaned a _yes_ , the sir forgotten. And then in an instant, he was gone—lifted up and leaned back, hands squeezing the meat of Harry's thighs just above his knees for leverage as he started to rock back and forth, small movements, his body clenched like a vice around Harry's prick, and something broke inside Harry, a quivering in him as the need to orgasm came over him like a flood.

"I'm going to come," he grit out, announcing it to the hot air around them, and Draco stopped moving immediately.

"Not yet," Draco said, his voice tight, "not fucking yet," he repeated and held himself in place as Harry keened, his back and neck arched at incredible angles, every nerve ending from his brain through his spine and out through his cock screaming to be tipped over that edge. Shivers wracked his body, and they didn't stop, and it was on the edge of painful not to come when everything in him begged to, but somehow, he held on. They were both panting as Harry's lower back met the floor again, Draco lowering along with him.

"My toy comes when I tell him to," Draco said firmly into the wet hair plastered to Harry's temple, and Harry sucked in his bottom lip into his mouth and nodded, not sure about words anymore. Draco didn't seem to mind and changed the angle again as he loomed over him, and Harry could feel the wetness of the precome smearing as the head of his pink cock rubbed against his abs like a cool touch, and Draco's knees squeezed at his ribs as he rocked back and forth faster, faster, and Harry was sure he could feel his heartbeat pulsing from inside his perfect arse. He panted out _fuck_ with every thrust, and then so many more words until Harry was brought back into his body by a nip to his throat, Draco's body trembling and his hands squeezing his own tightly as his voice went gruff and needy. "I need to come, _oh fuck, oh fuck_ , I'm going to come all over you, and I want to you come inside of me, help me come, Harry, fuck me, now, now, now—" and it was like invisible cords that had been holding him down were cut at the same time, and Harry's hips couldn't help but buck up to meet the soft flesh of Draco's arse as he slammed back down onto him. Draco squeezed his fingers so hard that the knuckles cracked as the first jets of his hot come spilt between their frotting bodies, and Harry shook, a grunt turning into a groan that ripped through his throat, his hips crashing as he met Draco's every bouncing downwards thrust with an _up_ of his own and then he was coming, coming, coming, like a rubber band had been holding him back and had snapped, coming into Draco's tight, hot, shaking body for what felt like forever.

"Perfect, you're perfect," Draco said, pressing his lips to Harry's jutting collarbones and licking a stripe up his neck and kissing his cheeks, and Harry couldn't see, certainly couldn't talk, knew only the feelings of so much wetness and of warmth, warm air and trickles of sweat running down his face, and the heat of the inside of Draco's body, how he was surprised that his own flesh didn't melt everywhere they touched.

They both watched as Draco rose up, Harry's prick revealed incrementally until it was finally released, super-sensitive and still almost totally hard, flopping, used, onto his belly.

"Like a glazed doughnut," Draco said, admiring it, running his thumb through the milky coating of come under the ridge of the head. Harry frowned and swatted away the hand, which only kindled a lazy smile on Draco's face.

He made a croaking sound after a very long time, realizing that he'd been thinking thoughts but hadn't moved, hadn't spoken in so long. 

"Are you crying," Draco looked to him, wiping his cheeks with careful swipes of his thumbs, "or is this sweat?" 

Harry shrugged, frankly unsure if any tears had spilt during or after the session that had seared through him so thoroughly. 

"Yours," he said, and Draco took one of his hands in both of his own and pulled it up to hold it over his scars, over the pale expanse of skin and muscle and bone, and the steady thump of his heart. Spots of come dotted his stomach, and Harry realized that Draco had come, untouched, a thought that was as sweet to him as anything. 

"You are mine," he agreed, tugging the hand up to press a kiss to its palm, his eyes holding Harry all the while.

"Yours always," Harry said, and the cracked quality of his voice made it so that Draco knew that this wasn't merely post-sex fugue, but something more profound, one of those moments that Harry only got to when his many, many walls had been broken down. "That means you have to take care of yourself, too. You have to stick around, to take care of me too. Always."

Draco nodded again slowly. He hummed, kept hold of Harry's heavy hand with one of his own and caressed his cheek with the other, thumb rubbing the ridge of his cheekbone as their sweat cooled and their breaths slowed.

"Always," he said, and Harry heard it as the promise he needed. "Always."

* * *

**Sunday, January 18, 2004**

Harry was grateful that the topic of the party didn't come up until he was tucking into rice pudding. He was so busy picking cardamom pods from Teddy's portion that he didn't hear Arthur the first time he asked about it.

"What's this about a party, Harry?"

It was procrastination on Harry's part that the topic hadn't been broached yet, and even though he was immediately seized by nerves, knew his cheeks were going red and the temperature of his body suddenly too warm for the jumper he wore, it was a good thing. Saying the words, speaking his truth, it was _always_ a good thing, in the long run.

"It went well, thanks, can't complain," he answered Arthur, cupping Teddy's tiny chin inside the soft divot of his fist and smiling at him, quietly mouthing, "Now eat your pudding before you make Grandma Weasley sad that you don't like her cooking."

"I'd love to host you all there, some night soon," he added, sure that those at the table other than Neville and Ginny, Ron and Hermione were quickly going to notice how suddenly quiet their group had become. The scraping of spoons on bowls and three cross-conversations being conducted at once suddenly fell away, and everyone was listening to Harry and Arthur.

"That would be lovely," Arthur said, levitating the teapot around to refill the many mugs on the table.

"Yeah. It's really different than it was before. During the war." Harry stopped, unsure how to segue into the topic that loomed over the dinner table, a secret suspended like a dark balloon as the centrepiece.

"Harry's being modest, it's smashing," Ginny added, giving Ron a wide-eyed look. Ron, flustered, looked to Harry.

"Yeah, I, er, brought over one of those karaoke machines that George has been fiddling with—"

"Excuse me, I haven't been _fiddling_ , little brother," interjected George, "those are about to enter the product testing phase, and I expect them to be a big hit come the next holiday season."

"We met some lovely new people, this couple studying at the University of London—" Hermione started, which caught Molly's ear.

"What's this about new people?" She directed the question at Harry. "They must be pretty important, for you to grant them access. New friends of yours, Harry, dear?"

Harry hung his head, knowing now that the jig was up.

"It actually wasn't such a hassle, Molly. Grimmauld isn't unplottable anymore."

A hush went over the table, which was enough to give Harry the want to laugh because that was by far the least interesting of his news for the night.

"Really?" Hermione asked. Harry nodded, not realizing that others would find the decision much of a big deal, even though _of course_ it was a big deal. Him, breaking down walls rather than building them up was certainly unusual.

"I started with written invitations, you know, so that even people who'd never visited before could come, and then I just started to wonder why, you know? Why all the secrecy?"

He trailed his spoon in a figure-eight next to his now-empty bowl, using a tiny bit of magic and concentration to set it to continue the motion all on its own. It was easier to speak to it than to _them_ , so he looked at it, attempting to tie the threads of his thoughts into a sensical, neat little bow that he hoped everyone seated around the table would understand.

"And then I realized that it made sense for the Black's, likely one of the most paranoid wizarding families of the last few decades, to live in a house that no one could find. And it made sense when we were being hunted during the war, and afterwards, so I had someplace to hide. But now," he grinned, remembering the free feeling he had after coming out, so like flying or falling, or both, all jumbled up together, "living in a hidden house is an act for someone who feels the need to be hidden, and I don't want to hide anymore. So I owled Mr Sparks, and he had the spell unwound. It's still one of the most heavily warded buildings in Great Britain, only now you can bring a friend when you visit and not worry about the hassle of inviting them in."

"That's a wonderful sentiment, dear," Molly said, and he looked up and held her kind brown eyes, and took strength that the love he felt in that room would be more robust than memory or prejudice, hatred or spite. He took a deep breath and looked back to his spoon, stilled it with a motion of his hand.

"Yes, it was necessary because the party was an introduction of sorts. I've been seeing someone, and we thought it best to finally introduce our friends to one another—"

"Which went well, _swimmingly_ , went just so well—" Hermione spluttered out before she was hastily shushed by Ron, Ginny and Neville, who looked to Harry and gave him a bracing little smile and a tiny nod for him to _go on and get on with it_.

"—and I'd much rather for you all to hear it from me, rather than from the papers, which, let's face it, we'll end up in eventually. You know the person, most of you at this table," he looked around, stopping on each face, realizing that due to how long he'd been speaking the whole thing was now indeed a _thing_ , and one could cut the anticipation in the room and spread it on bread, it was so thick, and then Teddy interrupted.

"Do I know her?"

Harry huffed a laugh, ended the spell that held his spoon aloft and turned to his godson, whose locks were black with white shot through, like Andromeda's hair, and wiped a sticky granule of rice from his cheek.

"Actually, you do know. Him. It's a him."

Teddy's delicate little eyebrows shot up like tiny caterpillars as he made a loud, "Hmmm!" sound.

"Is it Mr Brown?" Teddy asked, and Harry laughed then, as Mr Brown was Teddy's piano teacher, and roughly twice Harry's age.

"No, Ted, not Mr Brown. I rather think he's already married," he answered, and Harry turned back to the table full of puzzled faces with a smile in his heart rather than the jumbled feeling of worry that he thought he'd say the name with, and finally spoke the words aloud.

"I'm dating Draco Malfoy, and have been more on than off since about September. As you can imagine, he's changed a lot since you last saw or heard of him, and it's, it's—great, really wonderful, and I'm glad to finally feel like I can say that to all of you."

He sighed into the quiet of the room, Teddy giving a knowing, "Ahhh," and sat back into his chair to spoon another portion of pudding up, thoroughly satisfied with this answer.

"Is that so," Andromeda said, her chin quivering with the effort to hold back a grin that was too self-satisfied for Harry's liking. He rolled his eyes at her.

Ron pushed away from the table, his hands holding the edge of it as he screwed up the courage to say his piece. "Before anyone decides to have a go of it, know that Harry told Hermione and me months ago—"

"Less he told us, more like I _figured it out_ —" Hermione muttered, and he patted her hand.

"—right, my mistake—Hermione figured it out—and you should all know that I already threw a strop big enough for all of us, and it was stupid." He sighed and eyed the dregs of his pint of ale, no further liquid courage to be found in the glass. "Now that I've met the bloke I actually kind of, almost like him? Like he's, well he's not a prick, and I find that annoying, that he's _nice_ , even, and you can only imagine how much that pains me to say."

"I'll add that I've worked with him to a certain degree, and he's made his amends," Hermione added. She was stronger than Harry, looked people in the eye as she spoke. The Weasley's other than Ginny and Ron appeared to be in a collective form of shock, mouths slightly ajar, eyes round and glassy, mostly unblinking or, in the case of Arthur, blinking in rapid bursts as though to clear them of the sight before him. 

"Making amends," Neville added. "He's making them. And as Harry's friends, we're giving him this one chance to do it right."

"Let me remind everyone because Harry won't do it for himself," Ginny said, giving Neville's hand a squeeze, "that who he dates is his choice, not ours. Which is a blessing, because if it was in all of your hands, he and I might still be together and that would be awful for everybody."

Only Harry and Ginny laughed at her joke, both of them snorting and then trying to cover for it, but Harry was beyond glad to be _laughing_ , somehow, heart overflowing to have friends like he did, who weren't treating his relationship like a disease to be managed.

There was more silence, punctured finally by Teddy tugging at Andromeda's arm.

"Mmm?" She looked to him, one brow raised in question.

"If Dwaco comes to dinner, can he sit next to me?"

Andromeda ruffled his hair. "That's very thoughtful of you, Edward. I'm sure that if he were to join us for dinner, he'd be thrilled to have the chance to sit next to you."

"Starting to feel like a cold pile of chopped flobberworms over here already," Harry muttered, engendering snickers from across the table.

"Mum? Dad? What's happening, say something," implored Ron, as the Weasley elders looked to one another, faces long, and Harry thought, tired. He'd tired them out with this talk, and soon that look would turn to something worse.

_Maybe this is when you'll discover that there is always a line in the sand and that it's possible, no matter how much someone tells you that they love you, that you can cross it and not be invited back. You're a Weasley conditionally—they might take it away. And here you felt safe, fat and happy, cracking jokes, and you could never come back, they already think you're a freak, deep down, you know this—_

"Ron," George said in a tone that broached no compromise, "outside. Right now." He stood quickly and stalked out, throwing his napkin to his chair with alacrity, leaving Ron to drop his head behind his shoulders and sigh.

"Someone's about to be reamed out for 'borrowing' that karaoke machine," he said before planting a kiss to Hermione's forehead and slouching out the door.

"Harry, could we have a word?"

It was Arthur again asking Harry for that, nodding at the door, and Harry grit his teeth and forced a smile for Hermione, her brown eyes far too kind, and accepted the squeeze to his unfeeling fingers from Angelina, before he turned to the top of the table and nodded. He'd accept his fate, even if it would wring him dry, even if it was a stab wound to the heart he'd only just learned how to let love, really, truly, deeply.

Mr and Mrs Weasley stood and left the room, headed for the living room on the other side of the house, and Harry summoned his coat, sure that when their conversation was over, he'd want to or need to leave immediately.

"Bye, all," he gave a little wave to the table, and received fortifying looks from the faces left around the table, empty cups and bowls and so many steaming cups of tea left untouched. 

He was ready to turn and leave but noticed the chair beside his was also empty and looked down just in time to see Teddy enveloping his legs in a crushing hug.

"Bye," he said into Harry's knees. He looked up, not a care in the world, "see you."

"Yeah," Harry managed through a throat gone tight as he ruffled the child's hair and then he unwrapped his arms and was walking back to his seat, unaware of the weight he’d placed on Harry's heart. "See you all."

Harry turned to leave and noticed that Molly had hardly touched her dessert, a full anise pod visible in the wide beige expanse of pudding in her bowl, and he worried that he'd turned her stomach. The urge to cry rose up so suddenly that he took a hard right turn as soon as he walked out of the dining area, directly into the toilet and closed the door as quickly as he could without slamming it. He stood and stared at himself in the mirror, heaving breaths and praying for his throat to loosen up so he could _breathe, goddamnit_ , could swallow without pain. It took only a minute to school his features until his chin smoothed out from the form of a peach pit it had taken, so close as he'd come to sobbing, and then he opened the door and walked on to face his fate.

* * *

Draco didn't even glance up when Harry entered his flat that evening. He was just as had Harry left him, though he'd taught a class and showered and theoretically, hopefully, eaten in the interim. He sat curled into his preferred corner of the loveseat, a fleece blanket around his shoulders and the spine of a book wedged between his knees, fingers curled around a mug of something. His glasses had slipped down from the bridge of his long nose to nearly the tip of it, and Harry crouched before him and pulled them off, and removed his own, then took his mug of tea and placed it on the side table as well.

"Well hullo to you too," Draco started, and Harry stole his words through a kiss scented with bergamot and sweet with milk and sugar, and Harry wanted to dance with how happy he was to taste sugar in Draco's mouth and kissed him all the more, ignoring Draco's attempts to ask questions and following him by the mouth until he straddled him on the couch, until Draco pushed him away with a firm hand to the centre of his chest.

"Far be it for me to do anything but say _yes_ to being suddenly molested by a veritable sex god like yourself, but I need to ask you _what_ in the world is going on here?"

"Dinner," Harry said, beaming down at Draco's confused face. "Dinner tonight, I told the Weasley's about you, about us."

"And it went...well?" Draco asked, dubious, and Harry snuck in to suck his bottom lip into his mouth to kiss him again, one hand wrapped around the back of his head, holding him there, the other pressed to the ridged bone where his ribs met in the middle, the spot that he sometimes drummed his fingers on at night before they slept, amazed that Draco could make a sound so hollow when Harry knew him to be so full of life. Harry tapped the spot and felt the dull thud, vowed that they would build something on the scaffolding of Draco's body, soft swaddling to protect him so that the thud would be dulled to something Harry could stand to hear.

"You, dinner."

"Speak _English_ , Potter, you're not making any sense—"

"They want you over for dinner. Family dinner, you're invited."

Harry held Draco's face between his hands and leaned back as far as he could before his sight robbed his features of details, watched as the news washed over Draco, brought a happy curl to his lips, and the dimples that Harry would die for.

"Really?" He whispered, unbelieving as Harry nodded.

"Yeah, really. Teddy wants you to sit beside him, so you'll have big fans of yours on either side, too," he added, and the way Draco smiled at him, Harry hadn't known what it was like to cry from wonder before, from a heart _too full_ instead of one lacerated, empty, black and blue and broken, but tears dropped out of nowhere, and he didn't bother trying to contain them.

"Really. Really," he said, as Draco hugged him close and he caught his juddering breaths, exhausted and elated, because Draco had been thrown away from a table before, and Harry hadn't been sure of his place at another, and here they were, _invited_. To be made guests, to be honoured that way. It touched a place in him that could make him cry, and so he did.

* * *

**Notes:** Happy (almost) new year! Thanks for reading and reviewing, especially all those of you with the emotional capacity to follow along while this fic remains in-progress. Here's a little something a little early for you xx

The song Draco sings is "Bandages" by Hot Hot Heat. The soundtrack to writing this was "Night Shift" by Lucy Dacus, appropriately dramatic.

Next chap up by **January 15, 2021.**


	19. Clear, Vivid, Cruel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some flying, plenty of frotting, floo-ing takes a front seat, and the fruits of worry are dealt with. Mostly.
> 
> \--  
> TW  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Eating disorders
> 
> A gentle reminder to note the story tags, as they may have been updated since you started on this journey with me :) I've deleted most of the ~fun~ ones, and can't figure out how to keep them in the order I want them in? Alas! TW's have been added retroactively.
> 
> Subscribe to get notified when new chapters are uploaded! I aim to do so well in advance of all the deadlines given at the end of new chapters. xx

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**Saturday, February 7, 2004**

The thing about sunny days after weeks of rain was that they changed your perspective. Warmth on your cheek as you sat in a spot normally cool and dreary; the thrill of hiding behind a solid pair of sunnies in line for coffee, feeling sophisticated and mysterious; the vibrancy of spines revealed on a bookshelf, exploding into a rainbow of colour when a beam entered and hit at the right angle. A fortnights drudgery could be wiped from the memory with one day of sun, Harry thought to himself on one such unnaturally sunny day, and it wasn’t so unlike how an easy spell after ages of strife could wipe one's memory of how hard of a go it had been.

It was Saturday and he had custody of Teddy, leaving Andromeda free to attend the sixtieth birthday bash of a friend in Hogsmeade. Harry was avidly listening to his chatter over toast soldiers when the floo chimed unexpectedly upstairs. A minute later, in walked Draco in a new all-black outfit, looking expensive and radiant—quilted Barbour coat, form-fitting jeans and fresh-from-the-box Reebok’s.

"I thought you were with Narcissa today?"

Draco shrugged, dropping a large duffle from his shoulder to the ground as Teddy's hair went from glossy black to vivid pink.

"Dwac—" He sighed loudly, tiny fists bumping on his chair. " _Dra_ -co!"

"Teddifer, how ever are you keeping?"

Teddy beamed, too overwhelmed for once to answer as Draco sat next to Harry and planted a kiss to the outside of his eye.

"I was, but we finished early—Harrods is having a sale and she tires of being around bargain hunters too long," he answered melodramatically as he helped himself to a triangle of jammy toast from his plate. "So, I thought to myself, hmm, what's there to do on a glorious day like today, that rhymes with sqidditch?"

Teddy gasped. "Flying!" He turned to Harry. "Harry! I don't have my broom here but Grandma says if you're in charge I can ride it and Charlie B. from school started last year already and he fell and got the _biggest_ bump on his head, like—"

"We could pick up your broom, yeah." Harry held Teddy’s shoulders to get him to look at him before he inevitably exploded off his chair. "Could you help me and get your things?"

Teddy was already pushing away from the table, readying to run to the floo on the second floor where he'd immediately dropped his bag upon arrival.

"You'll have to finish your lunch first!" Harry called after his retreating back, "And no running in the house!"

"Not hungry anymore," Teddy called back, and Harry flicked a hand out, casting a Bounce-Back Charm over him to soften the inevitable blows into corners that came along with running at full speed on hardwood floors in socks.

Harry was about to ask more about Draco’s abrupt appearance but he was on him in an instant, his mouth practically spicy with the mint of his gum, which Harry felt as his tongue roamed his mouth.

"What's all this about?"

Draco settled into his own seat again, the sounds of thumping feet on the stairs overhead signalling that Teddy would be back before they knew it.

"Why not flying? I thought it'd be a spot of fun, and I won't pretend that seeing you on a broom doesn’t _do things_ to me."

Draco's smile was wide and easy like it hadn't been in ages, and Harry ran through a dozen reasons how it could go wrong, but they were minor—photographers where they shouldn’t be, or an onlooker angry with Draco for existing, or an offhand comment about Teddy’s hair from a nosy mum at the park—but Teddy was ecstatic, had even put his shoes on the right feet the first time, and so he swallowed those worries and banged a fist on the table. "Let’s do it, then. _After_ this toast gets eaten," he added, and Teddy was much more interested in finishing it when Draco intimated that he’d happily steal his remaining portion.

With sunshine, it seemed that luck was on their side. Draco tucked his signature hair away under a beanie and Harry wore his prescription Ray-Ban sunglasses—plain black Wayfarers, as Draco didn’t think that _tortoiseshell suited his features—_ and with his fringe low and shaggy over his scar, they surprisingly weren't recognized as he paid their entry fees to Ipswich, weren't accosted as they took up space on the family side of the field, and it was joyous what that little bit of anonymity did to Harry’s spirits. Draco didn't seem to mind being stuck within three feet of the ground as he ran drills with Teddy, who hung off his every word like it was gospel truth.

When Harry fetched them juice boxes and packaged sandwiches, the witch behind the counter jerked her head over towards where Draco ran zig-zags, Teddy laughing maniacally as he chased him about in their newly invented version of tag.

"Your son is _so_ cute," she said as she made change, and Harry flushed so furiously that Draco cocked a brow when he returned.

"Flirting with the sandwich girl, were we," he teased, and Harry was quick to cock his head and say, in a voice too low for Teddy to hear, "She thought our son looked _very_ cute, thank you," which brought a rich pink hue to his cheeks and set him coughing up his cherry juice.

"Sit, sit," Teddy told him. "I'll pat your back."

Draco did as he was told, regaining his breath but not his composure. "Thank you, Teddifer."

"My name is _Edward_ , how many times must I tell you," he responded, a spitting rendition of Andromeda at her most exasperated, and Harry’s heart was full to bursting, seeing the two of them together there.

"Mind if I take off for a bit? Might as well get some turns in before my first game." Draco waved him off, picking off little bits of sandwich to eat rather than biting into the thing properly, like a maniac.

"Go for it. Give us a show, won’t you?"

"Did you see the pictures of Harry?" Teddy asked as Harry summoned his broom from the bag, resizing it with a rap of his wand along its length. He pretended to fix the twigs for want of hearing Draco’s reply before he took off into the sky.

"In the magazine? I did," he said, innocently as could be. "Your godfather has perfect form on a broom, you know. He’s a natural—just like you."

And Harry thrilled to hear it, was glad to get away before Draco could point out how red his ears went, before he choked on his own spit from the compliment in there. He swooped and dove, spun circles hundreds of feet high, but nothing would dislodge the squishy feeling he got from the fact that Draco thought he had _perfect form,_ that he knew from the look he gave him once he landed that it was more than just his flying prowess that had Draco impressed.

"Your arse should be illegal in these joggers," Draco growled into his ear before he pushed him backwards into the guest bed that evening, the room shining pink and orange as sunset filled the space. They’d dropped an exhausted Teddy off with Andromeda, and Harry had the pleasure of seeing Draco sheepish as he gave air-kisses goodbye to his aunt. It surprised Harry when he announced the coordinates to his flat rather than Grimmauld Place as they left.

"You like staring at my arse?" Harry asked as Draco fell on top of him, his hands hot and needy, squeezing handfuls of it.

" _Illegal_. Pet, do you have any clue how many people across Europe are going to wank to those photos of you _mounted_ on Nova’s broomsticks?"

"Shut up," Harry answered, utterly unconvincing as Draco sat up on top of him, letting him gather his breath. "I didn’t say _stop kneading my arse_ , you’ll discover. I rather liked that."

"What else do you like?" Draco asked, tearing his hoodie off.

"You. This." Harry frotted up against him. "Whatever comes next," he added suggestively. A strip of pale skin had been revealed and he reached for it, slipping his hand palm down, as far as he could between Draco’s form-fitting jeans and his body, fingertips finding his pubes and unable to roam further.

"Keep going. What else?"

"Er, umm—that time in the shower, with _Incarcerous_. When you hold my hands out of the way."

Draco made a sound and pulled up the hem of his t-shirt, removing it for Harry, then his own.

"Keep going," he said. Harry cast around in his memory—he was hard now and wanted much less talking, much more Draco in his mouth, on him, in him, around him.

"Uhh—when you hum when you’re sucking me off. Pulling my hair, and um—" Draco tugged him out of his trousers and pants, scooting down the bed to rid him of his socks too. "Choking around your cock," he had to swallow, hard, watching as Draco started to pull the leather of his belt from the buckle and he blurted, "choking, in general, I think. I don’t know. I want to try that."

Draco slowed, looked to the belt, undone, each end in one hand, up to Harry. Back down again.

"Did you want to try with this, then?"

Harry felt suddenly much more exposed. He nodded, rose up onto his forearms.

"I think so?"

Draco slid it from its loops, the leather pliable as butter from years of use. He was obviously hard, and slipped from the bed to shuck his jeans from his legs, curiously leaving his underwear in place even as they left nothing to the imagination. His cock was hard, a thick line with the ridge of the head visible, trapped near his left hip.

"But? But what?"

An image flashed through Harry’s mind—not an image though. A memory.

This didn’t used to happen. His therapist had warned him that it might—memories long suppressed, weighted down in his subconscious by time. They were bloated by hyperbole—gaps filled in by the imagination of a scared child—floating up from dark depths and breaching the placid surface of his days when it was least convenient. This one was fast and sharp. He considered showing it to Draco instead of explaining it, but flinched internally at the thought.

No one else should have that image in their mind. It was a burden you couldn’t come back from. Especially not the moving memory, with visceral bits like sound and smell attached.

"Harry?"

"I want to try," he said. His voice was deep and even. It made him seem surer than he felt. "But I’m scared that I’ll think—I’m scared I’ll remember things instead. That I’ll freeze up or, like, _leave_. Mentally."

Draco waited rather than prodding, and after a few false starts, Harry found the words he needed. He spoke them to his navel.

"I got the strap sometimes as a kid, and I—I don’t want to think of my uncle while we’re having sex. But I don’t want fear of it happening keeping me from trying at all."

He traced a fingertip in a circle on the bedspread, noticed as Draco’s grip on the belt softened.

"Naturally."

Harry huffed an almost laugh, put on his best Snape voice. "Obviously."

Draco snorted, and when Harry looked him in the face he was looking back, eyes clear, totally present. Calming.

"You should have an out that’s non-verbal. It can be difficult to speak anyway. What with the choking," he added and Harry gave a crooked smile, exhaling long and slow. Draco accepted what he’d said and moved past it, like his _alright_ when Harry admitted his sort-of virginity. This wasn’t going to be an interrogation, and for that, he was immeasurably thankful.

"You can hold this," Draco went on. He spoke firmly as he unfastened the heavy gold watch he wore and pressed it into Harry’s right palm. "Hold it over the side of the bed. If it gets too much, or you need a break—anything—you let go." Harry nodded, watched where Draco’s heartbeat was visible in the indigo lines visible at his wrists.

 _He is a good instructor,_ Harry thought, his mind casting back to earlier attempts of Draco’s to primp his elocution, or inform him of politics or news, or even how he’d taken so naturally to working with Teddy earlier at the pitch. _You’ve chosen the right person to experiment at this with—he’s good at what he does. You’ve got hots for teacher, and he’s good with a pupil to teach._

"Go limp, or drop it and I stop. No questions, no delays. Understood?"

Harry’s fingers wrapped around the metal, still warm from Draco’s skin. He nodded, his mouth saying, "Understood," adding the "sir," exactly slow enough to be on the edge of sass. Draco raised a brow to signal that he'd notice it and then rubbed a palm along Harry’s shaft, drawing a breath from him.

"What’s with the watch?" He almost managed the question without gasping. Draco shrugged, dragged the hand, rolling Harry’s foreskin up and down. Playing.

"Was my grandfather’s, on my mum’s side. She likes me in it." He stopped what he was doing and looked back up to Harry, the trademark Malfoy smirk on his lips. "Don’t want to be thinking of him while we’re fucking either."

"So how do we..." Harry started to ask, and Draco took the watch from him and placed it on the bed, then lay his head down on a pillow and pat the space beside him for Harry to occupy.

"First, you try on me." He didn’t break eye contact as he lifted up and slipped the belt behind his neck and then fed the length of it through the buckle, tightening until it just encircled his neck, corded from tense anticipation. "Start with what you think a one out of ten is like."

"But, I don’t—" Harry bit his lip, and Draco smiled, drew one of Harry’s hands down and pressed it into his cock through his pants, eyelids fluttering at the touch. Then he placed the loose length of the strap in Harry’s empty palm and wrapped his hand around it, tightening it along with him.

"Don’t know how? This is how you learn." They stopped when there was gentle pressure, the metal making a divot into his throat. "One," he breathed, and Harry nodded to let him know he could drop the guiding hand. "One can be enough. Just pressure." He swallowed hard and caressed his bollocks through his pants, nearly died to see his eyes close as he panted through parted lips from his touch.

"Keep going till you think it’s a three, and I’ll say when."

Harry flexed his fist slowly, watching the buckle bite further into the perfect pale skin of Draco’s neck. They held eyes until Draco said, a little tightly, "Three. Now relax." Harry heard the words but was mesmerized; it took Draco repeating the words for him to realize that he had to loosen the strap.

"It’s fine, it’s fine." Sensing his growing panic, Draco smiled even as he gave a few gentle coughs. "Intoxicating, isn’t it?"

"Choking someone?" Harry asked. Draco reached up and tucked a curl that had fallen into his eyes behind his ear, let his fingertips brush the stubble pushing in along his jaw as the hand fell away.

"Taking control. That was the edge of choking—I could still breathe. No danger to the bones." He looked all over the points of Harry’s face like Harry was the world’s brightest diamond. "You have no idea what it’s like, for me, with you. How could you?" Harry didn't say anything, but he thought he had some idea of how it was for Draco. The way his raw power got him hard, and then to be able to control Harry with a word, or a touch. 

Draco swallowed, coming back to himself. "Once more. Let’s go to five. Tight, but not enough to totally restrict breathing. It’s more about pressure on the sides than the front, really, so use your thumb and fingers here," he touched at spots just under Harry’s ears to demonstrate, "rather than tightening the belt much further. Muggles are mad to do this, you can fucking die, but us? We're going to be fine, there's nothing that your _Episkey_ won't be able to sort out. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes, sir," he said, and this time there was no joking pause. This was the game that wasn’t; all at once release while being nothing but tension and technique. Total concentration to let go.

Draco licked his lips and nodded at Harry to begin, and he got to watch his pupils grow at the precipice, at the moment that his hand gripped tighter and he squeezed the belt under that hand, metal and leather separating their skin.

"Five," Draco gasped, and Harry released him and loosened the belt, and then they were kissing like they’d been separated for years, starved for it. He could hardly catch his breath between their locked lips, his hand slipping into the leg-hole of his underwear and gripping firmly at Draco’s shaft, tugging, finding the head wet for him.

"Now your turn," Draco whispered, and Harry flipped onto his back immediately. He wanted what he’d seen on Draco’s face—something far from fear—bliss.

It was something of a blur for Harry. Draco shed his pants, his fingers finding Harry mouth with the command to "Suck," and so he did, sloppily. One wet finger was soon playing at his hole, as he gripped at his ankles, pulling callused heels in until they touched his arsecheeks. Draco’s finger dipped inside as he kneeled and fed Harry his cock, which Harry was only too glad to suckle at, and then to take greedily, almost but not quite into his throat. 

"You like that, don't you?" He asked because he liked that Harry had to groan an answer, unable to speak with his jaw stretched open as it was. Then Draco stretched his neck long, pulling hard at a fistful of his hair as a second finger breached him, and Harry was very much in his body, full at both ends.

No. Not full. Not completely, not yet. Not until after Draco removed the fingers and his cock, which Harry was reluctant to have to let go. He didn't whine though, lay catching his breath as Draco dropped the watch into his hand. He ensured that Harry's fist was suspended out over the edge of the bed and wrapped his fingers around his. 

"Remember," he said, pausing to lick his lips. "First sign of trouble, you can say stop, and if you can't speak—"

"Drop it. I will, thank you," Harry breathed and held his eyes. They were there, in the bed, doing this. It was incredible and so unbelievably _real_ , with Draco intensely present as he slipped the belt around the back of Harry’s neck and sat atop him. He rolled his hips, dragging their pricks together and asked Harry, "Tell me what it is you want, pet, and I’ll give it to you. Anything you want." 

Harry said, "Choke me please, sir. A five," he knew he’d never forget that moment. The flare of Draco’s nostrils as he exhaled, lust written purely across his face.

"Five seconds, pet." He pulled the tail through the buckle until it pressed a gentle pressure to Harry's throat. 

Harry whispered, "Do it," and before he could add _please_ , Draco wrapped the excess leather around his left fist, his Mark rippling as the tendons in his arm flexed. The pressure increasing, followed by the moment he wrapped his right hand across Harry’s throat and then all at once pressed into the sides, and Harry’s gasp didn’t bring him any new air, and Draco was counting down from five, flicked his eyes down for only a moment when he thrust his prick along Harry’s, and smiled through the "two, one," like he’d won the lottery because that simple touch had made Harry’s body light up like it was on fire, his back arching off the bed completely. When he loosened the belt and asked "How was that?" Harry rutted up against him and growled "Fuck me," wanting that shivery feeling back, wanting more, the _most_ of every feeling possible.

They manoeuvred so Harry was on all fours and when he looked up and was confronted by a mirror behind the headboard, they caught each other’s eyes in it and smiled the way hyenas do. Of course, he’d need to see this. He’d probably never looked more debauched, a thick thatch of hair still pulled back and off to one side from where Draco had gripped it, the rest shooting off in literally every direction. And Draco—Draco really was his wet dream. Lips as pink as he was across the sharp rise of his cheekbones and nose—he’d burnt, somehow, in the afternoon sun. The look of concentration on his face as he conjured lube and pushed two fingers inside of Harry in a way that would be rough if he wasn't already loose, the smile on his face going lax as the muscles in Harry's back and thighs tensed at the intrusion and he gasped and then relaxed, Draco’s free hand rubbing his lower back.

"That’s good, pet, you’re so good," he murmured. "Careful with this," he said, pulling the fist with the watch in it up to the top edge of the headboard from where Harry had buried it without thought under a pillow.

He responded by arching his back and raising his hips. "Fuck me," he said again, forcing Draco to meet his eyes in the mirror. Draco arched a brow and smirked at the gasp that escaped Harry's mouth when he surreptitiously curled his fingers to press into that spot inside him, bringing a fresh sweat to his entire body.

"I don’t hear a please," Draco said as he withdrew the fingers. Harry whimpered; he was bereft; incomplete.

"Please," he pleaded, even as Draco pressed the leaking tip of his prick to his body, applying just enough pressure to begin to enter him, but not quite enough. "Please, please, _please_ fuck me—"

Harry’s sound when Draco thrust in was something like a scream and a groan combined. He managed to suck in a ragged breath before Draco drew his hips back and slammed into him again. He was a vision, biting his bottom lip in rapture, eyes locked on where they were joined. His torso tapered down from the breadth of his shoulders to where Harry couldn’t see anymore, where their hips aligned, and then he did it again and again, mercilessly, and Harry had to brace himself with one hand against the headboard to keep from being fucked through it.

"Please," he pushed words out in between thrusts, "again—please—choke me—"

Draco slowed his pounding down to drape over Harry’s body.

"We’re going to be careful, pet," he said, his breathing already irregular. Harry dipped his head and closed his eyes, preparing himself for what came next. He heard him swallow, then felt the tightening of the strap around his throat as Draco pulled it tight with his left hand and then wrapped his right over top, thumb under the joint of Harry's ear and jaw and his fingertips pressing in under the other. Even that pressure was enough to send a jolt down Harry's spine, directly to his cock. He felt so _owned,_ full up, held on a precipice. All he needed was the gentlest push and he'd fall over.

"If it—" Harry rasped the words.

"Spit it out, come on." Draco rolled his hips, pulling out of Harry little by little, and Harry quivered under him. He was going to implode.

"When you do it, may I come, sir?" Draco lay his forehead against the wet expanse of his shoulder blade and sighed like Harry’s question winded him.

"Yes," he rasped, and then, as though to remind him that he was still full inside him, his prick jolted and thickened and Harry gasped.

"How long?" Draco asked.

"T-ten seconds, please. And— thank you," he added. He could feel Draco's smile against his skin before he repositioned so that his pointy jaw was pressed into Harry's shoulder. 

"You're not going to last ten seconds," he growled. "Deep breath for me, now," he said and then placed a kiss to his back, and then it was happening all at once.

"Ten," he said, and he was so deep inside Harry that he could barely move, grinding deeply inside of him in infinitesimal movements as he gripped his throat tighter. Harry made a sound and then it shut off as his windpipe did, and his grip on the watch doubled.

"Nine." 

Harry gasped, felt the moment a burst of Draco’s magic washed over his skin and how he pushed until there was no further to push, until the root of his cock stretched Harry to his natural limit, and it did something divine in Harry’s brain and shot down his spine—

"Eight." 

Draco’s exhalation behind his ear brought a shiver to his skin, and his own cock pulsed as Draco readjusted his grip, thumb pressuring his jaw up, up—

"Seven." 

Harry closed his eyes and arched a little more, and Draco’s cock slid back past that nerve bundle inside of him and he was coming undone from inside, the fire had travelled down his spine and Draco removed the hand from his throat but didn't loosen the belt, brushed his freed hand over his swollen shaft and Harry would mewl or scream or cry out if he could—

"Six." 

Draco had to grind the word out from between his gritted teeth, himself breathless, and Harry started to shake, the screen behind his eyelids going white—

"Five." 

They were a closed system, nothing coming into Harry’s lungs through his mouth, but on an in-stroke that spot inside him overloaded and the tightness he hadn’t noticed in his balls broke and he was coming, could feel the tension inside him loosing, pulsing out—

"Four." 

Harry shook, or the bed was shaking, or the foundations of the world were, and his orgasm poured out of him hotly. He _needed_ a breath, was lightheaded as flecks of spunk hit his neck, stomach—

"Three." 

Draco could barely grunt the word out. It was his hand moving on Harry’s cock, pulling all this wet out of him, squeezing at the base, making him see stars—

"Two." 

His voice was reedy, high, and his grip at Harry’s prick held fast as his hips juddered, barely moving inside him and—

"One." 

He let the tension on the belt go as Harry gasped in, lips prickling with pins and needles. His fingertips tingled even as his body clenched around Draco, toes curled from the force of it. The sound of his ragged breath joined Draco’s groan because he’d been waiting to release Harry to release himself. He made a broken sound as he bit into Harry’s shoulder and pressed in as far as he could, and then Harry surprised him, pulling away and pushing back, and he smiled to himself to hear the sounds Draco made and feel him shake as he came, hips juddering to a stop. Harry could feel his come clearly, inside, a hot river, and then there was panted breathing and it was all over. Neither of them moved or spoke, suspended together as trembles rippled through spent muscles. They lowered to the bed in jerky movements, then lay together, half-moons conjoined, glued together by spunk and spit and so much sweat.

"You can let go now," Draco said after a very long while. It was night proper, the sun having set on their sex, and it took Harry a minute to realize he was talking about the watch now clutched to his chest. Draco peeled his fingers back and he let it fall to the covers, where Draco pushed it away from them. Harry's palm was sore, red lines showing where the metal had been long pressed into his flesh. At long last Draco slid from Harry's body on a sigh and flipped onto his back. Harry managed to rotate to do the same, but found that it was better to cover his eyes with his forearm and let them slip closed. Blackness, stillness, and quiet were all he felt up to.

"Are you alright if I go make us some tea?"

Harry moved the forearm from his eyes and responded with his eyebrows, the facsimile of a _yes_ , and Draco took it that way, covering him with a sheet, going so far as to tuck it in around him before he got up and left. Harry wasn't asleep but felt like he awoke when Draco returned and sat at the edge of the bed, waiting for him to prop up helping bring his own mug to his lips.

Once Harry managed a bracing sip and Draco helped him shakily put it down on the side table, a laugh loosed out of his tender throat.

His voice was raspy, but not broken. "What have you done to me?"

Draco smiled indulgently. "For a while there, I thought I'd fucked language out of you forever." He sipped his own tea, and Harry could hardly believe that he'd lain there, in the very same bed the summer previous, watching an enigmatic Draco watch him back. Of all the changes that had occurred in his life, that he and Malfoy had become Harry and Draco was easily the most wonderful and bizarre.

"In all seriousness, it's got a word for it. That place you go, when you relinquish control, that's called subspace. And this afterwards, when words won't come, or you're too tired to open your own fist, that's the drop. Going a little foggy because we've gone and flooded your brain with all the wonderful chemicals it enjoys, and then they wear off all at once."

"Ah, another drop," Harry nodded sleepily. His eyelids were half-mast at best. "Apparently I'm prone to those."

Draco hummed, put down his own tea and leaned in close. His fingers found Harry's throat and he tipped his head back, examining with a touch soft as down where he'd applied exact pressure and force.

"You can swallow alright? It doesn't hurt to talk?" Harry shook his head and Draco, apparently satisfied, crawled to sit next to him. He drew his wand from where it had been abandoned to the edge of the bed and cast _Lumos_ , a few small balls of light illuminating the room as night lights might.

"You make it easy for me to forget sometimes that this is your first time doing this. That I'm your first—" He twiddled his fingers in the air.

"Boyfriend?"

He closed his eyes, leaned against the headboard. "Sure, yes. Boyfriend. But also, partner that you're exploring kink with. That's what this is, what we do."

"When there's pain involved?"

Draco's face screwed up, but he didn't open his eyes. He was exhausted too, Harry could see, though he clearly saw it to be his job to nurse Harry through his drop and not the other way around. Harry took the opportunity to pull his right arm into his lap and start the kind of gentle massage that Draco was normally very adept at pulling away from, citing the needs of work and concentration. He suppressed the groan low in his throat, trying to hide how good that simple touch felt.

"Not necessarily pain. Negotiation." They sat quietly as Harry worked his way up from the wrist slowly to his elbow, marvelling at how the body managed even under extreme pressure to persevere.

"We don't talk about this enough," Draco said, a non sequitur until Harry thought about it for a minute.

He gave Draco's arm a final squeeze and placed it back in his lap, resting his head between where the bony points of his shoulder and collar bone met and his throat. Harry's head felt incredibly heavy, and it was good to rest there.

"Never been much good at talking, myself. Much more of a doer." Draco huffed a breath, found his fingers and interlaced them. It was easy, breathing in sync, warm and ensconced in low yellow light. Like they existed in a world outside the world, had found a cavern that only the two of them could enter.

"But I'm happy to try. What is it you want to talk about?"

Draco squeezed his fingers. Harry could practically hear him thinking.

"What I want, I guess. I like this, being in control of you for a little while. Calling you pet. But there's also a part of me that wouldn't mind putting on a show for you too if you'd like."

"Does this show involve lipstick?" Harry asked, and Draco's sound of interest intimated that it could. A memory pinged in Harry's mind—a helpful one, for once. "Or that underwear you wore on Halloween?"

"I told you my size before, and I'll repeat that lingerie makes a _wonderful_ gift," Draco teased. "I would like to try that with you. I've done drag a couple of times—London Pride, that sort of thing. Would you—could I do that?"

"Could you dress up? Are you asking me if I'd find you attractive in a dress? Because the answer, if it was ever unclear, is a rousing _yes_. Mostly because I'll still know about your enormous prick underneath it all." The tip of Draco's tongue darted out between his lips as he bit it, unable to contain his grin, even with his eyes still closed. He looked dishevelled and silly, and Harry thought it was possible he'd never felt more in love than he did at that moment.

"You can top me in lipstick whenever you want. Or bottom—I'm not picky."

"That’s my line, wanker." Draco nuzzled close, brushing their noses together. The moment passed, and he drew a deep breath. Gathering strength.

"Would you still want me, if it weren't for this, do you think? For the games, you know—without the sex."

Harry felt the question as a pang in his heart, and he wanted to effusively answer that, _of course_ , he would, how absurd it was to think otherwise. But he thought about it fully, thought of how Draco would answer him, as though perhaps that might get the answer through better.

 _With another question,_ he thought.

"Would you still want me, without this?" He asked in turn.

Draco sucked in a breath, an entire diatribe on his lips. But when their eyes met, up close, he stopped before he started.

"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer," Draco said. He sighed, entirely too soft and open.

"Good. Neither will I," Harry breathed into him, soaking in the feel of his eyelashes soft as moths' wings at his cheek.

* * *

Perhaps with love came selective memory, because though there were plenty of cold and blustery days as February plodded on, Harry was hard-pressed to recall even one of them. Each day came and went according to plan as he and Draco settled into a regular rhythm. Harry spent more and more time in Leeds at the worksite, but his days were flexible. That left him largely available, something especially helpful when contrasted with the rigidity of Draco's schedule once his work and research both started up again suddenly and in earnest.

Mornings were a blur of necessity; Draco squeezed Harry's fingers goodbye before daylight, bustling out in rainproof outfits that swished when he walked, and he was nearly always soaked through whether by rain or sweat by the time he made it home. Harry dragged himself to the parlour as he always had, though it wasn't a parlour anymore. He'd had it converted into a proper gym, filled with shiny equipment and, later, at Draco's request, a birchwood barre along one long wall. Draco joined him there most mornings after his run to stretch, until the eye-fucking got hot enough that they moved on to the shower, or back to bed, or on occasion tugged at the elastic bands of each other's joggers and pulled each other off inside that veritable hall of mirrors, gasping, sated and happy on a haphazard pile of foam mats.

Daytimes were punctuated by the occasional owl delivering a note (still Draco's preferred method of communication, especially when it was salacious) or the electronic _ding_ of a text message (Harry's, which were as often mundane as they were raunchy). Harry joined the Auror’s pub quidditch league and rediscovered all the muscles he'd been neglecting in his back. When he had to late-cancel lunch plans with Hermione, she pulled Draco instead out for half-price happy hour sushi, and it went so well that they decided to make it a monthly tradition to slip away from work on Friday's at five and trade gripes about their boyfriends, office gossip, and chat with the only other people they knew as likely to read the Guardian as the Prophet.

Book sales were stellar even as the hype petered out, and articles about Harry and Justin dwindled as a new scandal rocked the wizarding world when the bassist of the Weird Sisters quit the band. There were football matches watched on the telly and late evening conversations over cups of tea in Draco’s quiet places. There was Harry armed with an arsenal of disposable cameras because he told himself he was "practising for a real one," making new memories to tack to the fridge: mostly of Draco multi-tasking; sat with legs splayed out in the wide ‘V’ he called a straddle, leaned forwards, holding the position whilst reading. Harry, shooed away when his staring proved a distraction, left to photograph pockets of Grimmauld Place that he was discovering all the time like the house was blooming for him.

 _Or for us_. He kept those thoughts private, though it was fast becoming a struggle. He'd never meant to keep his feelings about anything secret from Draco, but things were so bloody easy that he kept tricking himself into one more day, then one more after that, never wanting to darken the conversation with pointed questions about well-being or disorder. Draco's mood and outlook improved so quickly that Harry knew it to be fishy. But when he brought up his fears to Hermione, she'd given him a look of pity and told him _not to look a gift-horse in the mouth_ , and so Harry pushed that worry down, because why worry about things being too good? He thought that the house could sense strength to their union and was reacting to it, and he lied to himself, pretending that maybe the new plants bursting to life in a nook in the garden, or the tiny bedroom that appeared off the master, the right size for a child's room or a nursery, that it meant something. That they were solid; as if the house wouldn't accept a relationship that had rot under the facade.

And he let himself be drawn under Draco's spell that he was doing well because it was easy, too. Draco certainly made it look easy, re-built the schedule he'd had back when Harry had to be pencilled in during the handful of hours he should have been sleeping, and there were so many bricks in the walls that he structured his world with, so many tasks glueing everything together like mortar, that Harry could see now how Draco stayed busy to keep himself afloat. That for him, being occupied was a replacement for being happy.

There was work, mountains of it. Around and after work was research, at his flat or in the Ministry library, hidden under the imposing Barbican Centre, where he somehow grew paler. Mondays meant contemporary, and ballet was Tuesday and Thursday, and every other night there was stretching or class prep or reading for Pansy's new-year's-resolution of starting a feminist book club, or the time he re-dedicated to his houseplants. Saturdays included lunch with Narcissa, and every night but Sunday they ate together, Harry experimenting with new cuisines unless Kreacher beat him to it. 

He teased Harry about his own workload— _you're suspiciously busy for a person without a job title_ —but Harry's days had nothing on Draco's.

It took him ages to realize that Draco nowhere in Draco's intricately planned schedule was _therapy_ pencilled in, but his answer when asked was simply that he'd stopped.

"Why," he drawled, dog-earing a page, "have you come to realize I'm really, truly mad?"

Draco read scientific journals while loudly humming at anything he found interesting or worked on his typing at Harry's laptop, which was excruciating to watch, and when mealtime came, he didn't by any means eat as much as Harry thought he should, but it was enough. He didn't make excuses to slink away afterwards, smiled around single, stolen bites of lemon meringue pie. He put on just enough weight that the skeletal look left him, enough that he passed for healthy when clothed.

"Fashion week ready," he joked when Harry ran a finger over the crests of his ribs through his back. He’d been shirtless and backlit after they’d rolled around under a full moon, sharing blow jobs and, after, an ultra-slim cigarette that looked like a toothpick between his long fingers. "Not just New York either—Paris too."

He smiled like it was an easy joke to make, and Harry knew he should ask the question then, but he wanted to let it be easy because he was tired, honestly, of trying so hard. He didn't want to go back to Draco's rages and blank-eyed-stares, his temper tantrums at being asked to make a decision between two kinds of soup for lunch. Harry could ask anything of Draco now, and the answer was always _yes_ , a yes with a caveat that he'd have to check his diary to find when to slot it in, but of course, yes, always yes, now. It freed Harry of the _need_ to take care of him, turned it into a want rather than a necessity.

He could barely admit it, felt sick to his stomach to say, "It's nice, not having to try so hard every day." Martin, his healer, had given him another version of Hermione’s advice, and Harry went back to his old mantra, haunting him once again— _a bad thing doesn't have to happen because a good thing has_ —which he whispered over and over again each morning as he faced himself in the bathroom mirror, even though he still thought the saying had an inverse relationship to the truth.

As far as he could tell, Pansy had thrown that word— _purging_ —around without knowing what she was on about. She apologized to Harry by owl, along with a bottle of fancy bitters that Draco liked in his soda. The next night, Harry came home to the two of them watching a black and white horror film—" _Pre_ -Hayes code," Draco said, waggling his eyebrows like that meant something to him.

It was close to normal and in that way, it was almost, almost enough.

It was a nice delusion, but one that was interrupted by the memory of Blaise's rational backing up of her outburst. And things fit if he cast his mind back. Draco's penchant for control, for finding order in chaos. How rough his knuckles had become months before, purple and bruised, and how thin he'd gotten. The difference between Draco after a month of being together and how Harry had found him in early January was enough that he knew that his poor health hadn't occurred by chance. It wasn’t neglect that did that, but a monster feeding on the sugars in his blood and the muscle that pumped it through tired veins and into a sluggish brain. Harry did enough reading on the internet to know that Draco's brain too had been nibbled at before things got better.

Things were good. Great, even. Other than this one, potential, glaring secret, life was practically perfect.

And then, as they do, things changed.

Mid-February, Saturday morning. Harry coaxed Draco to sleep in past sunrise, in direct violation of his rules, waking him with a hand job and, after, keeping him in the bed's wrinkled sheets with the promise of fresh crêpes. Draco wheedled through the crossword and kissed Harry languidly, his spit flavoured with the sweetness of green apples and the earthy spice of cinnamon, and Harry was powerless to resist being fucked by him into the headboard, slow and sleepy, and soon it was early afternoon, and they were rushing out the door to meet with Blaise and Matilda for a late lunch in Soho when it happened.

Harry stepped out onto the stoop, Draco following behind him, nattering about how he needed to find the right pens, needed Harry to remind him to buy new ones. A flash went off, blinding white, like a clap of human-made lightning. Draco had turned to face the closed door and said the incantation to reinforce the wards, his wand arm lowering slightly as the light enveloped them.

"Harry! Harry! What are yo—"

Harry waved a hand, wordlessly casting a _Muffliato_ so thick that it blurred all sound coming at them from the street, cutting off the shouted refrain of a reporter mid-word. His most practised smile pulled into place as easily as if curtain strings were attached to the corners of his mouth and had been pulled out and up.

"Who—" Draco's head whipped to the left to discern where the yelling voices had been coming from, and Harry held him by his elbows and cut him off.

"Hey! Don't look at them," he said, voice even and calm even though his heart rate felt like it had doubled. "Look at me, stay looking at me. It's okay, it's okay, really."

Draco turned back to him just as another flash went off, his brow wrinkled behind the fat black Tom Ford sunglasses he so loved.

"How do you know it's okay _,_ Harry? This is your _home._ " Harry shook his head a little, still smiling. It was the smile that service people the world over held in place even when berated by customers, the smile he’d practised on his Uncle Vernon even as he knew he was going to be punished. It was a smile that pleaded as much as it tried to please.

"Don't worry about it," he said, "this was bound to happen eventually. The most important thing right now is that we both smile, alright? If they catch us doing anything other than smiling, they'll run a story breaking down how my frown speaks to how you're a tyrant, and your stony look gives away your, I don't know, black heart or whatever."

"I don't like fake-smiling," Draco said, but he did it anyway, however faintly. Harry rubbed his elbow one more time.

"Yes, but you'll thank me later. Now what we're going to do is hold hands. I'll go first, and you follow. Stay smiling, and whatever you do, _don't_ look directly in the camera. Look up and over their shoulders, someplace just beyond them. We need to make it to the alley and I'll Apparate us to Soho, alright?"

Draco nodded, his blank mask coming up, which Harry responded to with an even wider smile of his own.

"Ah! Smile, remember? Always be smiling, always smiling. Just take a deep breath and don't listen to a word they say to you or to me, alright? Let's—"

"Why can't we go back inside?" Draco asked as another flash went off and he turned to face it, remembering too late not to look directly in the camera. Harry fought the urge to wince— _that's going to be the one they run, I know it_ —and took Draco's hand in his own, squeezing it bracingly.

"We go back inside, and they'll say we're hiding. And we're not hiding anymore. Come on, deep breath, and—"

"—smile, yeah. I've got it," Draco turned his smile on full force, sighing as he did it, and Harry started down the steps, kept his chin down, toothy grin shining.

"You know what," he said as he pulled the gate open to the sidewalk where three photographers were crowded, only one of them recognizable to him, "I bet I could keep this _Muffliato_ up all the way to the alley. So, we can keep talking to one another."

"Look at you, ever casual with the displays of wandless, _in situ_ magic," Draco retorted, catty, even though his tight grip on Harry's fingers spoke to his nerves. The flashbulbs went off and Harry thought, weirdly, that he was glad Draco was wearing a soft colour—a light grey jumper with overlong sleeves, and lilac coloured stitching—because it would soften him. As though a hint of purple would keep the papers from calling him a demon.

"Yeah, we should keep talking as we're walking—makes for more dynamic shots, you know?"

"What do we talk about, though?" Draco asked through gritted teeth.

They walked down the block, the photographers shooting off as many shots as they could, all five of them moving at a swift pace. Harry could see their lips moving, hear their shouts as though through water—dim, muffled, unable to make out individual words.

"Oh, we can talk about all sorts of nonsense. Can even just say words, you know?"

Draco sped up as the alley approached on their right. "What do you mean, _say words_? Which words?"

"Any words!" Harry was glad to be able to react like this in what was effectively an emergency because there was a high likelihood that Draco would freak out the moment he could. He could pretend levity, remain jovial, and it felt fine to do it in service of Draco's nerves.

"Um, in a category. Let's do cheese, I'll go first. Stilton."

He tugged Draco close as they rounded the corner. It wasn't easy work, side-stepping wide puddles of run-off and garbage juice while trying to look thrilled to do it. Only a dozen steps to go as more shots were snapped, their entire journey down the block having been lit tungsten yellow and halogen white in turn.

"Double-cream brie," Draco said.

"Ummm—Applewood cheddar."

Harry chanced a look, could tell that his fake smile was turning into the real kind.

"Gruyere!"

"Er, Swiss—alright now, hold on," was all the warning Harry gave as he stopped walking and pulled Draco into a hug, resting his cheek on his shoulder and concentrating on the single Apparition point he knew of in Soho.

"A urinal? Seriously, Potter?"

He steadied himself with a hand to the loo stall door, breathing out through his nose to control nausea that seemed to be getting worse with these jumps as he aged, even as Draco berated him. The ceiling in the space was so low that the halogen stuttering to life above them was hardly a head above Draco.

"It's the only Ministry approved spot in the area," he explained, eyes squeezed shut. "This stall is always available unless someone else has just Apparated in. Which reminds me," he fiddled with the door behind Draco's back to unlock it, gave it a push on its rusted hinges, "we should get moving, quickly."

They stumbled out into the permanently "Under Construction" public urinal, jogging up a set of very authentically piss-scented concrete steps up to street level, a block off Oxford St and across from a tree-filled park that Harry immediately beelined to.

"Let's get away from the point, quick," he tugged Draco to the pedestrian crossing and into the grassy space, only slowing his pace once they were surrounded by scraggly trees, bereft of leaves, blending in with the similarly dressed Muggles walking about.

"Were you so afraid of having someone Apparate on top of us?" Draco asked, turning the messenger bag strapped across his back around to the front and dig out a hand lotion. He twisted it into his hands, a cover for his continued nervousness.

"On slow days, they watch these points. That's how Savoire Fairy gets most of its shots of celebrities sniffing strawberries at the market; they trail anyone of even middling interest from Apparition points to the nearest posh grocer."

Harry hadn't realized how much adrenaline had shot through his system due to what used to be a routine mauling by photographers. It hadn't even come along with the epithets and shouted _Gotcha!_ lines that were sure to become their new normal. He placed his hands at his lower back and stretched, face to the sky as the sunlight that had awoken him thinned with swirling clouds. A chill ran through him and a feeling of emptiness—partially fuelled by hunger, and something else, too.

"Are you alright?" Draco removed his sunglasses and looked at him as he applied Chapstick, the furrow of concern between his brows. When Harry didn't respond, he shook his wrist to reveal his wristwatch and looked to the corners of the park.

"We're early, now that we're not walking to lunch. Why don't we fetch some overpriced tea and walk around for a bit? You look like you need it."

Harry felt something in him snarl, but he nodded instead, said, "Sure," and gave Draco a thin smile to reassure him. "Fine, just—rattled, a bit. Are you? Okay?"

Draco nodded, relaxed at last. "Yes, I'm fine. I shouldn’t worry so much, it’s going to give me premature wrinkles," he said loftily, and they made their way to a nearby Starbucks where Harry sat, worrying a hand through his hair as Draco waited in line and paid. Harry nibbled at a thumbnail. This was another kind of drop, not unlike shock, not unlike the depression he'd fallen into after having been dosed. He had to be careful to contain it and not allow it to entrap him. He followed Draco out from the shop and watched his feet as they walked the borough in silence.

"You know," Draco said conversationally, slowing his pace as they turned a street corner, "the first threesome I ever had was around here. Off Berwick."

Harry stopped walking and Draco did too, taking a careful sip of his green tea, fixing Harry with a stare. He considered what the statement implied—was Draco trying to share with him, some of his history? Was he trying to occupy Harry's mind with salacious thoughts, distract him with images of Draco in compromising positions? Was this an allusion to what happened in walk-ups in the district?

"Pet, say something. You seemed fine until we made it to the park and you said so yourself. This was bound to happen once Grimmauld stopped being unplottable. So we were photographed—big deal. There isn't—"

"It's all going to change now." A drop of rain fell into his lashes and made him blink; another hit his cheek. It was spitting, not yet raining properly, but Harry was glad the weather was starting to match his mood.

"I've been putting off planning for when this would happen. But everything's going to change now, and I ought to have prepared more for it."

"How?" Draco gave him an incredulous look and held out an arm. Harry grudgingly took it. He didn't want to be coddled. He felt restless, like he wanted to fight, or fuck. Draco ambled at an easy pace, apparently unaware of the seed of discontent growing within Harry. "What is it that you need to get ready?"

"You," he answered simply, and Draco snorted, sipped his tea. Harry could practically feel the worries swirling like a putrid mist, hanging low in his mind. The box would have to be dealt with—it was dangerous to have left the difficult conversations so long.

_Not now but soon, soon. Tonight, soon. Cut the cord—no more waiting. You can't afford to wait, not ever. The world will not wait until you're ready. You've left it too long, and they're going to eat him alive._

"I mean it, Draco. You're not prepared, yet. It's hard—no one ever is, really, ready to be the centre of media attention." He jabbed a nail into his thumb, an old habit he never could quite break. "It takes a sociopath to wish to be a celebrity, honestly."

"I'm aware of what is going to happen, Harry. I knew from the first moment I tied a knot into a cherry stem with my idiot mouth and decided to trust you that I had to be ready for what it meant to be involved with you."

Harry shook his head. Draco thought _he_ was stubborn.

"You should have seen Victoria by now. I'll ask if she's available tomorrow—can you make tomorrow work? Fuck, I just—I'm sorry, but it's going to be a lot." Harry took a sip of his drink, burning the roof of his mouth. Draco had bought him a mocha, a sweet gesture, but it was chalky on his tongue and finished bitter. He vanished the remains of it and leaned further into Draco as they walked, both of them patently ignoring the droplets splashing down.

"I'm not against talking to her. I could use some pointers, you know—is she who taught you how to give your best angle to photographers? Because I noticed in your old shots, you obviously _know_ that your left side is your good side." Draco spoke with a smile in his voice, but Harry knew him too well to be fooled by that. Under the bluster was worry; it had to be there, and it wouldn't do for Harry to let it fester under the surface.

"If they've found Grimmauld," he answered seriously, "it's only a matter of time until they find your flat."

"I've planned for that." Harry tilted his face up to look at Draco, catching his self-satisfied smile. "I've decided that once a mob of reporters takes up at my building, I'll tell my neighbours that I'm very famous for doing commercials in Japan." He lowered his voice, leaned in like he was whispering a secret. "My hair really makes me stand out there, you know. I've never been stared at so much in my _life_."

Harry couldn't help but guffaw.

"Okay, well—sure, that's kind of brilliant. But, Draco—it's going to be fucking awful. They'll go for anyone willing to talk about you. Your family, friends, especially your enemies."

Draco vanished his own cup with a quick look around. "That should keep them busy for quite some time, I should think. Just imagine how thrilled Lucius will be to have reason to slander me on the record."

Harry stopped again so suddenly that the Muggle couple trailing behind them nearly crashed into them. The man held an armful of bags from posh shops, his female companion's purchases, and as they sidestepped Harry and Draco, the man spluttered, "Fucking faggots, learn how to walk," before Harry could apologize. He stood, stunned, as they walked on, the woman's barking laugh loud in his ears.

Draco took a long, deep breath in and let it out in a long, loud sigh. He looked behind them like he was worried that someone had seen the altercation. His ears and cheeks were pink.

"I'd get into a screaming match with them most days, but right now, who has the energy?"

It wasn't right. It was off—perhaps it was safer, Draco not chasing them down and giving them an earful, but it wasn't _him_. And they were convenient, really, in that Harry needed a release valve for all the worries he'd been collecting, so he touched Draco's cheek and said, "Look away, or take a walk around the block if you have to."

It may have seemed like he wasn't thinking, but Harry did contemplate his next actions. The whispered _Immobulus_ said aloud for Draco's benefit. Letting go of his hand as he stormed up the block and ended the spell for the couple in the same breath that he cast _Obliviate_ on them. Hearing the clipped clicks of heels on the pavement, and then feeling Draco's hand slip back into his. He was so perfectly angry but unafraid of what he was doing, the sound of the city quietening down to nothing as he took a deep breath and stared into the glassy, confused blue eyes of his prey.

"Easy now," Draco said, low. Harry squeezed his hand, and he wanted to growl that this _was_ him being careful, that to not have been careful would have been to knock them both to the ground and hope that they lost teeth in the fall, but he didn't have the time to say any of that.

"You and two enjoyed a lovely day of shopping, but when you get home, none of this shit will interest you anymore," he said, as the woman looked confusedly to the black and pink Agent Provocateur bags slung over the man's forearm.

"You're going to find as you go about your days that none of the things you used to care about bring you joy. Not food, not drink—"

"Harry," Draco warned, touching his arm, which he flicked off.

"And not today, and not tomorrow, but soon you'll come to feel like you owe the world for being alive. That you need to give back—"

"Give back," the man echoed hollowly.

"Yes, to give back. You'll hear a mate go off about how his son's a ponce, and your stomach will ache because you’ll think of how that hurts to hear, to have that slung at you by some bigot. You'll hear an advert on the radio about victims of natural disasters, or disease—fuck, you'll walk down the block and be asked for change, and you'll know that each of those moments is an opportunity to make up for the waste of your pathetic, horrible, meaningless lives. You’re going to give your time and your money and dedicate yourselves to undoing all the horrible shite you’ve managed to up till now."

"Pathetic," the woman said, her glossy bottom lip wobbling.

"We're sorry," the man said to Harry, confused about it. Harry turned to Draco, whose eyes darted around, on the lookout for anyone who might be watching the whole weird altercation happen.

"Apologize to him and then get the fuck out of my sight," Harry growled.

The man turned to face Draco, "We're sorry," he said, the woman joining him in an off-kilter chorus. "So sorry, love, we're sorry," she mumbled, and then they backed away, mumbling apologies, and something came over them so that they ran. The woman lost a shoe, didn't think twice about going back for it. Within seconds all that was left of them was her pink kitten heel, the satin grimy with dirt, perched next to a grate.

"What was that?" Draco asked. Harry followed him a few steps until they were protected from the oncoming downpour by the moss-covered awning of a vintage clothing boutique, both of their eyes still glued to the high heel. It started to smoke, and Harry looked away. He should feel embarrassed, but the only burning in him remained rage.

"I'd call it self defence," Harry said. Draco fumbled around in his pocket and lit a cigarette, and neither of them said anything for a long minute, until an ambulance tore around the corner, its braying siren jolting them from their reverie.

Harry opened his mouth to say something else, and Draco shook his head.

"You don't think that was a little much, considering that ten minutes ago you were afraid that we were being followed by reporters?" Draco pulled on the cigarette and raised his brows but not his voice. He didn't seem particularly angry. Annoyed, perhaps.

"It's what they deserved," Harry said, "and it's defensible."

Draco gave a little _hmm_ sound, one arm around his chest as he took another drag, blowing out the smoke through his nostrils.

"Explain," he said, simply. A droplet of water fell directly down the back of Harry's collar and he winced, shrugging his shoulders and finally casting an _Impervious_ charm over both of them. His magic was getting stronger, though he wasn't doing anything to hone it, particularly. Even through his annoyance he noticed the flare of Draco's pupils as Harry's spell fell over his skin—he loved the feeling of Harry's magic, and it never failed to turn him on, little shows of power.

_That’s why he’s not pissed at you for going off on them. He likes it when you show you’ve got a backbone. Or maybe he just likes to see a tiny bit of cruelty inflicted on someone else, still. You like it too, after all, don’t you?_

"We can use magic to defend ourselves against Muggles. What he said constituted an attack on our safety. So, self-defence."

Draco scoffed, stepped out from under the awning and started walking on, signalling that they were done staring at the forlorn shoe. He toed it into the grate as they passed, flushed it into the city's ecosystem of detritus. "If being called a faggot is hate speech, I’ve got about a dozen human rights violations to bring to the Wizengamot. Self-defence is a bullshit reason for what you just did, and you know it."

Harry snorted. "You're right. It is bullshit. But who’s going to tattle on me?" Draco didn’t say anything, and Harry bit the inside of his cheek.

 _Careful, now, breathe, breathe._ He was letting anger, the pure, blue-hot kind bubble up in him, and that was always a scary route to go. His anger had a way of making him feel dirty, reminded him of his time as a conduit—a Horcrux. It was misplaced, but he needed to rid himself of it or he knew it would turn inwards, or be directed at the people he actually cared about.

"I'd get away with it because as we’ve both noted before, I'm Harry Potter."

Draco huffed. "Harry, just—don't, alright? Don't. I know, okay?"

"Know what?"

Draco sighed, and Harry pushed. "Know what? Say it." They were walking faster now, around couples and families and tourists, all of them far too slow for Draco's liking.

"I know you're upset on my behalf because yes, you're used to the scrutiny and I haven't had to deal with it in ages. But I'm not new to this. I know that they're going to dredge up every awful thing I've ever done, including some things I don't even remember. It's going to be hell, and they're going to say things that aren't true, but it's alright because I'm not scared. Not even a little bit. And we're going to do it together, right?"

They stopped again, close to their destination. A chill had seeped into the air as the fog rolled in. Soon one wouldn't be able to see across the street for want of trying, the crisp white of the winter's sun muffled behind thick swaddling in the sky. Draco pulled off his sunglasses and tucked them into his collar, imploring Harry to—to what? See reason? Agree with him?

"You should be scared," Harry said, "and yeah, I'm upset. But I should be. The public likes a foil, Draco. They're going to paint you as a villain, and they're going to be cruel. It's gross, what I can get away with because it's true—to them I'm Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived," he gestured wildly before realizing that he was far too loud and animated for the pavement, gathering stares from passersby, but he couldn't give a care. "I'm their golden hero, and anything less than that standard makes me a monstrosity. They'll turn on me soon enough too. I'm an idea. The only reason anyone is even about to give two shits about you for the next media cycle is because of me, and it’s vapid, and it's disgusting, but that’s my life, and I didn’t _think_ enough about this. But now it’s gone and happened and—" Harry growled something like a yell and stopped, pressing fingers up under his glasses into his eyes, pressure building into a blinding headache out of nowhere. "I hate it, Draco, I hate it so fucking much. I operate in a world where the rules for me are very, _very_ different than they are for everyone else, and I'm not so much angry about it as I am scared of what they're going to do to you. To us."

"Pet," Draco said, quietly, as though to remind him that they were still in public. "There's nothing they can print that's going to change how we feel about each other, right?"

"Secrets tear people apart," Harry said. Draco stared at him, didn't so much as blink out of turn. "They'll find them, and they'll use them against us. If there's anything you're not telling me, Draco, now's the time."

Draco didn't say _What secrets_ or get defensive, or look at him funny and make an offhand remark about his old friend paranoia cropping up. Instead, he sidestepped the insinuation completely and said, "We're going to be okay," and pulled Harry in for a hug. It stifled, he needed to _breathe_. When Draco pulled back and searched Harry's face he didn't find what he needed, but he plastered on a big smile, nice and wide and plenty convincing to anyone that wasn't Harry.

Stalemate. It was clear now to Harry that Draco wouldn't answer a question unless it was asked outright. He wasn't going to freely admit to anything.

"I'll talk to Victoria, alright? We won't use the front door of Grimmauld anymore, and you should take all this _I'm fucking Harry Potter_ bravado and swagger over for a chat with the Minister about what could come up related to my position," he said. A change in subject as self-preservation. "I don't feel like losing my career over nothing twice. And while you're at it, perhaps it would be worthwhile to get your barrister—"

"Sparks," Harry said, and Draco nodded, looking off into the distance.

"Mmm, yes, perhaps it would be prudent to get Mr Sparks on standby. If there's going to be libel, we should draft some cease-and-desist orders." The edge of spite with which Draco said it was enough to get Harry to crack something like a smile. He needed Draco to be a fighter to make it through the oncoming storm.

"Good thinking," he said, on auto-pilot.

"One of us has to have a clear head. This lunch is going on your tab, by the by," Draco said, at last, gesturing for Harry to follow him across the street. "Because you're the incredibly wealthy and immeasurably powerful _Harry Potter_ , and all," he added sarcastically.

They both managed smiles at the joke that wasn't a joke of Harry's life. As they turned the corner, he started talking instead about the menu and how Harry had to try the ahi tuna in smoked leek leaves, and something about non-alcoholic sake and Harry knew then that _soon_ had come. Because the media storm wasn't truly what Harry was afraid of.

Because Harry had handed Draco his old workbook on Wednesday night. Because even though Draco was highly logical, he rarely left his glasses or his wand in an easy to find place when he was at home and was happily reliant on Harry's willingness to summon or simply get up and fetch him anything he wanted. 

Draco had asked Harry to find his most recent chemistry workbook, and Harry hadn't needed to flip through it to make sure it was the right one, but he did, because it filled him with awe to see the work that Draco found mundane. The cover was dated, as all Draco's written ephemera was— _October-December, 2003_. The insides were filled with the neat, cramped writing he used for note-taking, the shorthand of chemical compounds, and the complex symbols of maths Harry could hardly fathom.

On the edges of the first few pages were other notes, written in a script that was minute even against his usual standard. Calculations pushed to the edges of pages and kept small like they were inconsequential and didn't deserve the space of his regular work, and Harry did understand these. Amongst Draco's marginalia were symbols next to common words Harry recognized. Like the number _3_ with an _x_ next to it, and the word _mandarin_ , repeated. He flipped pages and noticed _mandarin_ shortened to _m._ as time wore on; the number _40_ next to it, multiplied and added to others. Little numbers,

_3x m. (40) = 120_

and some more telling, like,

_1x coffee (2)_

_1x milk (15)_

Crosses, the kind meant to symbolize help and health; more, plenty, bounty. They added everything in neat columns as Draco tallied up what

_toast_

+

_butter_

meant. The numbers were so small on some days that they were unfathomable, but these would sometimes still be paired with unhappy faces. And then the symbols Harry dreaded. Each minus a slit, like a cut into soft flesh with a box cutter, only Draco made his on the page with a pencil sharpened by razor's blade.

- _500_

interchangeable with

_run_

The numbers and the words meaning the same thing to him, until everything summed up neatly, just the way Draco liked it. To an infinity that was also nothing, to

_0_

interchangeable with

: )

Harry had snapped the workbook shut and delivered it to Draco, accepting the peck to his cheek in distracted thanks. He'd sat with a book Draco had lent him, open to the same page for a half-hour as he crammed that new knowledge into the box. The enormity of that finding alone was more than enough to knock the top off it and drown Harry in every ill-feeling he'd locked away for the past month if he wasn't careful.

Because Draco had thought he'd found order at the end of a beautiful equation, where the answer was always equal, was always zero. And Harry knew that the sunny respite of the last few weeks hadn't been the start of a new season at all—it wasn't yet spring. It had been a chance to catch their collective breath before the next sprint. Sunshine enough to make it through winter, nothing more.

"I'll order for us," Draco said casually as they sat, a touch to the back of Harry's hand. Harry knew then that he'd studied the menu already; that the lack of a run today meant

_2x run = -1,000_

tomorrow. That for him, there was nothing casual at all going on. Harry knew that Draco thought he'd found control over their little lives, had tricked himself into the lie that life itself was controllable. And Harry pulled the practised smile back into place as he praised Matilda for her choice in the restaurant and avoided Blaise's meaningful looks because it was going to be up to Harry to wrest the illusion of control from Draco's hands.

Because they'd never been safe. The very best they'd managed, as yet, had been pretend. The make-believe of naive youth—the safety, and impossibility, of zero.

* * *

**Late February, 2004**

Harry thought he'd had some grip about how bad the response would be, but he'd been wrong. Orders of magnitude wrong.

The first week saw Rita Skeeter in rare form. She penned the explosive exposé to accompany the photos of Harry and Draco hustling down the street, hands clenched together, chins down, the flashes of the cameras sparkling in their dark glasses. They looked good in a superficial way, and that was part of the problem. It was plausible after all for good-looking, privileged people to do bad-people things. Common, actually. The story was replete with all her greatest hits—questioning Harry's sanity, asking if his need to save people was pathological. She questioned whether Draco might have been dosing him to create feelings of lust, duping him into a sex-crazed relationship, and implied that he may have started up a regimen of doing so when they were teenagers, thus addling Harry's mind into adulthood.

The word buggering was used in headlines for the first time in decades. Then came every shred of information concerning Harry and Draco as a unit. Every event they'd attended "together" was pored over with a fine-toothed comb. Rumoured drug use and claims of excessive drinking abounded. Had Grimmauld Place been used as a perverted ground zero, an ultra-secret bathhouse for the wizarding bourgeoisie? People crawled out of the woodwork with anonymous quotes about sightings—the Halloween party, in particular, was a rich breeding ground for gossip, though nothing solid ever took shape.

Draco's only saving grace was that because he worked in Mysteries, his name wasn't on any official scrolls of employees, so his movements were difficult to track within the building. By the end of the first week, Hermione suggested that they come over and spend the evening in, which was a much-needed break for the monotony of hiding inside Grimmauld. For his first-time visiting Draco made himself at home instantly, claiming the corner of the couch that was usually Harry's as his own, and surprising his friends when he suggested that they eat curry _from the floor of the living room_. Harry nursed a well-deserved pint as he watched Ron feed Prophets into the fire while Draco lounged, reading the latest story about them for the first time all day.

"Aren't you curious Ron," Draco asked after a long, amiable silence, "whether it was Harry's early childhood trauma that turned him into an insatiable bumboy? Or if it was his later, teenage traumas?"

"Don't care," Ron mumbled. Of the three of them, he was somehow the most incensed by the day's article, finding it especially egregious. They listened as the fire popped, Hermione's voice audible through the wall as she finished up another long conversation with her parents from the bedroom, and he tossed another handful of papers in.

"I wonder if you wore pink tomorrow if that would be enough to get Skeeter to get the words _power bottom_ approved to run for print." When neither Harry nor Ron responded, he dropped the paper and sighed dramatically.

"Come now, boys. We can't let them ruin all our fun. Ron—aren't you going to ask me what a power bottom is?"

"Don't know, _certainly_ don't care when it comes to you two," Ron responded. At least the exchange was enough to pull his lips sideways into something like a smile. Ron took a deep swig of his whisky and lay on the floor.

"It's a shame, really. Among friends I really don't mind revealing _at all_ that I prefer—"

"Ahhh!" Ron made a loud, long sound, staring at Draco. He'd gone terribly pale behind the scruffy red beard he'd adopted. "This is like if I told you whether Hermione or I prefer being on top—"

Draco squidged up his lips. "Not really, this is much more about—"

"Ahhhhh!" Ron waved his hands conclusively outwards. "No! Absolutely not! Don't need to know when or how, or why, _or_ where."

The next week was worse, evidenced by Draco's reading of the articles ever earlier in the day, while his wry commentary became ever sparser. They maintained their routines and didn't talk about anything more than what channel to flip to next, and what was on for dinner. Harry became more certain every day that the closeness he'd felt growing between them was waning, and he didn't know what to do to unstick his tongue. He needed for Draco to come clean to him, and yet he couldn't bring himself to ask the question. So, he woke, worked, and slept. Smiled when he was supposed to, and the sour, worried feeling grew like corrupt fruit inside him.

Harry owled Maude and added Draco to his service so that his mail would be sorted along with Harry's. She firecalled him a day later to sort out how he wanted to pay for private security to screen Draco's mail because the death threats containing hexes were too dangerous for the mailer's staff to contend with daily.

"And there are...a good number of them," she said, hesitant to describe what that number could be, and Harry had been glad that Draco wasn't there to learn of this particular detail.

While most of Draco's time at uni was still a black hole in the media's reporting, the messes he'd gotten into beforehand were chum in the water. Every picture, every outfit, and every portkey booked was made available for scrutiny. The managers and staff of every disco, hotel, bar and rave cave Draco had fallen apart in was interviewed, and the picture they painted was one Harry knew made sense to those who didn't know Draco. That he'd escaped any real punishment for his participation in the war and gone on to party like it was going out of style. That his perversity was relational to his family's wealth, as though only the rich were gay, and that though there wasn't evidence for it after 1999, he'd probably been that same foppish bad boy ever since. And they didn't talk about it, but as the days passed it became clear that it was only a matter of time before _The Missing Years_ , as Skeeter called them, came to light.

Midweek, Harry popped in for a late lunch and a nap to find Draco unexpectedly home early. He was fully clothed, boots still laced up, laying on the bed and staring at the wall opposite. It marked the first panic attack he'd had since they'd started up, though the voice in his head helpfully added that this was only the first _that he knew about._ A dose of calming draught kept him in bed all evening and into the night, the only thing to keep him from work in ages. Harry suggestion that he take the rest of the week off was met with a scowl, and rather than press, he left it.

At the end of that week, Harry rose to an empty bed and dragged himself to the parlour. There was no Draco to join him for stretches, no Draco in the shower, or back in bed. Harry found him only after a search bordering on frantic, his voice faintly answering "In here," to Harry yelling his name down the stairs. He sat still in his dressing gown and pyjamas, tucked away in the sitting room he liked best.

Harry didn't have to ask what the matter was. The latest Prophet was unfurled at his knees, and Harry read that first. Lacking a new story to run, Skeeter had circled back to the only photos of them together—leaving Harry's flat—pointing out the scarring visible between Draco's hand, clutched in Harry's grasp, and the cuff of his jumper. She questioned where such a burn could have been gotten, pointed to the lack of known medical records, and the theories came thick and fast. Perhaps it was the burn earned by a junkie, passed out near an open flame. Perhaps an acid attack from a dealer that hadn't been paid promptly. And so on.

Harry tossed the paper aside, scratching at the back of his neck.

"I'll ask Vic on this one. She'll deny, and say it's a potion burn and was dealt with privately."

Draco didn't say anything, passed him a letter on thick, creamy parchment, and went back to staring out over the garden. Harry folded it back up carefully and sat next to him when he finished reading it.

"So, what this sounds like to me," he said carefully, "is that Lucius is breaking up with you. Officially. Is that it?"

Draco snorted but the look turned pained too quickly. He took a deep breath and the look washed away. "Very astute of you. I knew this was coming, it was part of the deal. Gloves," he said, looking vacantly out the window blurred by the day's downpour. "Won't have to wear them anymore."

"He's done this over your scars?"

"Well, that, and the gay part. I should have been looking forwards to it."

Harry ran his fingers over the letter, though it was written in dense legalese and he wasn't sure he'd understand it much better on a second reading than he had on a first. "I'm sorry."

"Disowned. I used to really worry about it, you know? Like it was the worst thing that could happen, and now here it is. How is it that I feel so empty?"

Harry didn't know what else to say so he didn't say anything at all. He made him coffee, forced him to split a muffin and a banana with him, and held him overlong before he left for work, and Harry should have only been thinking about how he was feeling just then, but it was the lack of his run that ripened the fruit of worry in his belly. He'd left Draco's secret alone too long. He knew what it meant for him to be knocked off schedule, or rather he _thought_ he knew, but in reality, he had no clue. Had rubbed at his ankle as they'd sat on the couch that morning, and noticed the bruise running along his big toe and into the arch that should have healed weeks ago, faded but still present. Realized that he ran on that foot, and awoke through the Dreamless Sleep, and had stopped taking the tincture, but that still, somehow, everything with Draco was _yes_.

_You think you know what he does to feel in control, but you have no idea, and everything's spinning out of control now. And you can't stop it. You can't stop anything with silence._

They visited at Ron and Hermione's flat that night for more ceremonial Prophet burning. Nobody talked about the fact that people were only arriving through Apparition or floo, because reporters were now staking out Ron and Hermione's flat too. Draco joined in the fun, levitating fresh copies to feed the flames from a stack Ron arranged like logs on the far end of the room. Harry wondered where he was nicking them from, but thought better than to ask.

"I can't wait until they start reporting on the sex cabal I organized while at Imperial College," Draco said, winking at Harry. His mask was up, and it was so good, so close to seamless, that Harry almost believed his cheery nature. When asked about his week, he’d groaned convincingly about the banality of grant application writing. It was like the glamours he used to apply—almost invisible, but the tells were there if you knew where to look.

"Excuse me, _what_?" Pansy blustered, accepting a green bottle of beer from Luna.

"Yeah. Guess how many times we met and all fucked in the library?"

Pansy shrugged and Luna and Ron blustered.

"Wait, are you being serious. Did you do this like, a _lot_?" Ron said.

Pansy's jaw looked like it might never close. "Is Skeeter going to find photos?"

Hermione _tsked_ them all, sharing a look with Draco. "You're all terrible—he clearly never did that. All this tripe is going to your heads."

Draco raised an eyebrow and toast to her. "Thank you, Hermione. I'll kindly remind all of you heathens that libraries are sacred spaces of learning and self-betterment, and the furniture is not suitable for orgies. Be logical for a moment, I implore more of you."

Neither of them managed more than a handful of bites of takeaway, and when Draco excused himself to the loo as the group decided between Exploding Snap and watching a film, Harry escaped to the kitchen to catch his breath.

"You alright, mate?" Ron asked. He loosened his grip on the dining room chair he'd been holding on to, staring at the floor for god knew how long.

"As I can be," he said, and Ron clapped him on the back, rubbed his shoulder.

"It'll all blow over in another week," he said, and Harry nodded, gave him his best smile, which wasn't even very good anymore. 

"I heard about George," Harry said. Happy sounds emanated from the living room, but he wasn't listening to that. Harry tried and failed to ignore the continued sound of running water from the washroom down the hall. 

Hermione had to be the one to firecall Harry and tell him of Ron and George's blow-out, knowing that Ron wouldn't bring it up on his own. It had started with George citing worries that the new karaoke boxes might somehow be tied back to having been "tested by Death Eaters", which was a paltry cover for his real feelings about the gradually warming reception Draco was receiving. Apparently, they'd spoken about it on multiple occasions since then, and those conversations had culminated during a yelling match at the back of the Wheezes shop, where Ron had shown his allegiance to Harry with unwavering loyalty. And so it came to be that George was added to the pile along with Percy, of brothers he wasn't currently speaking to.

"You know how George gets," Hermione had said, and that was all that Harry had to hear to understand that this wasn't just a tiff. Losing a twin had irreparably damaged George's ability to forgive. 

"You know how George gets," Ron said. His gaze narrowed as he caught Harry trying to contain a smile. "What's funny?"

"That's what Hermione said." It took a second, but Ron cracked a little smile too. The water was still running, so Harry wasn't all there in the room with him, but he had enough wherewithal to add that he was sorry about what was happening.

"Save your breath. It's not your fault he's still angry. I mean, fuck, I'm surprised I'm not still furious with you, for, you know. Him."

"I'm really glad to have you as a friend, Ron." Harry struggled with making those words, not allowing them to warp into _I don't deserve a friend like you_. He drew closer and clapped a hand to his shoulder, slid it behind his neck, bringing their foreheads together. It was a gesture they'd adopted during the great camping trip of seventh year, for when all three of them were too smelly and tired and awkwardly sat against trees to manage a hug. "Thank you for being my friend."

"You're welcome, weirdo." He released Ron and he rubbed Harry's shoulder, giving it a squeeze. The sound of water stopped, and soon there was Draco, looking at the two of them.

"Everything alright?" 

"Yeah," Ron nodded, moving towards the kitchen, "grabbing refills. Want another Harry?"

Harry said yes even though he shouldn't have, drinking because he felt like he needed to. He didn't look at Draco directly for a long time because he didn't want to look into his eyes and search them for burst vessels, and still, at home that night, Harry said nothing. Did nothing.

"Did you have a good time?" 

"Yeah," Draco responded drowsily, pulling Harry's arm tighter around him. His knuckles brushed his sternum, and he gave a few soft knocks. Hollow. "And you?"

"I had a really nice time," he whispered into the darkness.

* * *

**Friday, February 27, 2004**

Harry shaved clean, single razor gliding over his cheeks, careful over the hills and canyons of his jaw and chin. Slow, around his nose and upper lip. He washed his hair twice in the shower and sang loudly, boisterously because he thought that there was no one around to hear.

"Someone's chipper today," Draco intoned from behind a wall of printed paper when Harry descended into the dining room for breakfast. For the first time in three weeks neither Harry nor Draco blinked out from any portion of the front page, whose cover instead had the dread headline about an Azkaban prisoner up for release that month, convicted of Muggle child-killings twenty years previous.

"What's happened?" Harry stopped fiddling with getting his cuffs down from where he'd rolled them up past his elbows. Draco hadn't slept over the night before—they spent a night apart each week, as though that made things between them less serious. Harry thought Draco did it to for his own continued illusion of living at his flat, though he virtually only visited it of late for work or to grab a fresh set of clothes. His drawer in Harry's armoire had become two; ten hangers were now a full section in his closet. Harry had floated the concept of him setting up a cauldron and workstation in the blue spare bedroom. Rather than comment that doing so was an overstep, Draco had remarked, " _The blue spare bedroom'._ You used to call it Sirius' room." They hadn't talked more about it yet, which was good, because Harry contained a ball of conflicting emotions about moving on and growth, and what Draco's moving in a real way would signal. Permanence. 

_Can't call it playing house if what you're doing is building a home together._

Draco appeared, applying pressure to the paper with a finger to curl the corner down so that he could look at Harry with one eye.

"Nothing's happened, don't sound so worried. Mordred gave me the day. We went for tea, and she suggested that we each take off a little early."

Harry raised an eyebrow, walking the length of the room down towards the kitchen, a plate of food left for him under one of Kreacher's perfect stasis charms. Eggs, bacon, orange slices. He grabbed it and a cup of tea and rejoined Draco at the table, waiting for more.

 _You're becoming a coward,_ the Voice whispered to him, and not for the first time that week, or month.

"Aren't you going to say that it's a little early to take off _a little early_ , considering it's only half-nine?" Draco folded the paper up and placed it to the side, peering at his wristwatch. He was still in his work robes, open to the white shirt and charcoal grey trousers he wore most days. The watch matched his belt; prim, black leather and a silver face, unostentatious. New. Harry wondered if he'd bought it so he had one to wear on days other than Saturday; so that he'd be prepared for when Harry needed something to hold on to. The sex lately had gone fairly vanilla. Perfunctory, sometimes, even.

"I figured you'd share when you were ready to," Harry said carefully. He devoured two eggs, was staring at a rasher of crisp bacon pinched between his fingers when Draco cleared his throat.

"It was because our dear friends in the media have found my exact office within the Ministry, at last. There was a bit of a melee for employees trying to enter Mordred's office for our department meeting this morning." He tipped his head, examining his nail beds. "Seems as though our activities will be moving to some of the Ministerial suites of conference rooms starting next week."

Harry nodded, ate the bacon, forcing normalcy. Draco stole an orange slice, and Harry wanted to ask if that was breakfast, but that wasn't how this conversation was supposed to go.

_Be direct, for once, and stop circling the issue. You're a coward, you're a coward, coward, coward—_

He didn't know why he'd put on cologne and brushed his hair only to come downstairs and tackle his day's big task—dealing with a fresh mountain of mail. A package in clear cellophane was most obvious—a gift basket holding matching baseball caps and new sunglasses, one pair round and the other square—the card signed, _To the stunning couple. I hope these help next time you're out in Diagon. Call me before you dare step out together at any parties! Reza_.

"Isn't that interesting, don't you think? I'm not an imposition anymore. Now, when something disrupts my day at work, I'm sent home for a nap and asked if I mind using a secure route into the plush rooms."

Harry watched as the smile drained from his face, knowing it was put on. There was tension around his clear grey eyes, and he looked pinched. Tired, especially for the morning. Everything seemed so calm on the surface, and he knew then that it was time, finally. The scrabbling thoughts were pushing at the lid of the box and it was getting hard to breathe again. He saw Draco's notes, the pluses and minuses, each time he closed his eyes.

"What's the matter? You've been," he fluttered a hand over his shoulder, "away, somehow. It's like you're not here with me lately."

Harry walked his plate over to the sink, leaned onto the counter's edge and dropped his head.

"Can I," Harry started, and he coughed into his hand. Why wouldn't the words come? "Can I—"

"Christ, you know I hate it when you _ask me_ if you can ask a question, ask me—"

"Why did you go to rehab?"

Draco huffed, staring at Harry, who stared back at him. There it was, all at once. The beginning and the end.

"Are you asking, or do you already know?" Draco said evenly. His breath caught and what little colour he had drained from his face as something occurred to him. "People don't know, right? It's not—you haven't heard that it'll be published?"

"No, nothing like that," Harry answered, and Draco nodded, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as though he'd almost been sick just thinking about it. Harry's heart sank, knowing then how it could unravel him, for it to get out.

"If you know, why do we have to talk about it? Was it Pansy?"

Harry shook his head and then stopped. "Yes, and no." He swallowed around the lump steadily growing in his throat. "Pansy and Blaise told me they were worried about you, but I'm not entirely sure I understand, so I'm asking you, Draco. Why?"

He visibly bristled. Seeing him, sitting there, looking pallid under all his put-on finery reminded Harry starkly of the time he'd barged in, once upon a time, demanding that Harry leave him alone. 

"Am I not allowed some fucking privacy in this relationship?" 

Harry scoffed at the ceiling.

"Privacy, you're entitled to. But it's not one secret, Draco. It's a nest. It's a—a network, with you. These things, they're connected, and you can't keep secrets when you're with me. Not really."

He blinked, the way he did when he was preparing a lie or stemming the need to cry. "What are you talking about? It's not that complicated. I was addicted to a whole bunch of things, so I went to rehab. End of story."

"Don't do that, don't _lie_ to me. I told you before, this won't work if we keep secrets from each other. There's not a secret in the world that you're going to be able to hold on to from Skeeter, either. She's going to find it, and I can't help you if you won't talk to me about it."

The sneer was back, even as his chest rose and fell faster, harder.

"Some things aren't fixable. People aren't equations, Harry," he snarled. Harry thought that was particularly sad.

"I didn't say fix, Draco—"

"You don't know anything," Draco grit out. The anger was a cover, it had always been a cover for him. "It's like I said. Just drop it."

"Will you at least hear me out?" Harry asked. Draco bit his lip, sitting ramrod straight, blinking, blinking. Harry remembered this look from the trials. How he'd been scared, clearly, to move his hands from his lap and onto the arms of the chair at the centre of the dais. Had made a sound that had cut Harry to pieces when the chains sprung up because he'd clearly been so fucking scared. They both were.

"You're doing it again," Draco said, "going somewhere in your mind. Go ahead, if you're going to tell me off about being me, here's your chance."

He wasn't running off, and he wasn't yelling, so Harry knew it was his time to pour it out—everything he'd stuffed down would be brought up and out, into the light.

"There are things I know. Like, I know that your body is hanging together by a thread—you're in pain, Draco, every single day. You've never had proper medical treatment for your burn. You try to take the edge off, but it's not working the way it used to. That tincture isn't enough. The dose of Dreamless Sleep you're on is barely cutting it, and I think you're taking it more for the pain than for the dreams."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Draco said the words, but they had hardly any bite, and he wasn't correcting Harry. Defensive, sure, and that meant Harry was on the right path.

"I think I do, though. You still haven't looked into treatments because you don't think you deserve them, do you? I know it because I went through the same thing, and it's not true. It's not."

"Alright, Mister Look Where Therapy Gets You, sure. I could take better care of myself." He sniffled, held onto the seat on either side of his lap, shoulders up by his ears. "Congratulations for noticing that I'm not doing a great job of it, would you like a biscuit?" 

Harry gave a look but held his tongue—fighting was an out, and there would be no more outs, now. 

"I'm trying. It's not so simple."

"No," Harry shook his head, though he agreed with Draco, "no, it's not simple at all. It's complex, is what I'm saying. Because that pain that you feel all the time, it changes how you think. It robs you of your ability to concentrate, so you have to stay busy, to keep your mind off of it. It makes you tired. I can't imagine how tired you must feel because of it all the time."

"I'm a busy person. It doesn't have to mean anything," Draco deflected.

Harry shook his head and took the seat next to him. He looked miserable, but he wasn't leaving, and that was good. Harry sucked in a deep breath and exhaled, praying for strength to say the rest.

"You're depressed, Draco. Not the way I am, or was. I had—have, I don't know—I have grief, and anxieties, sure, but you? You've got something deep that you've lived with for a long time, in a way I don't understand, and you've done an excellent job managing, but you don't have to manage all on your own."

He was quiet for a moment, worrying his bottom lip. When he finally let it pop free, he asked, "Do you think I'm on drugs? Is that what you're worried about? Because the tincture—"

"No, I don't think you're on drugs." Harry smiled gently, edged closer in his seat. Draco didn't move away from him. Good, that was good. "I hope you'd tell me if you were. You can always tell me things; I want you to know that." 

He took his bare hands in his own, no more gloves now, but kept looking him in the eyes as he spoke, and there was unspeakable pain there. Harry knew he was on the right path and had to force them through to the end.

"I know that the runs that you take me on are a little over three miles, and that you actually run five every day."

Draco tried to pull his hands away, but Harry held fast. "How can you know that?" He breathed unevenly. "Have you been _following_ me?"

"I don't have to. I've done the math, and the timing is off." Grey eyes widened—there, a tell. He'd been caught in a lie that he'd thought was airtight. "You take too long when you go alone because you go longer. Of course, you run five, it's a nice, even number, and you like that number, don't you?" Draco's eyes were sparkling, and if he cried, Harry was afraid that he'd stop speaking because he didn't want to hurt him, so he kept speaking, as fast as he could push the words out. "You like fives and zeros. It's too much strain on your body, and you push and push and push until you're exhausted, I honestly don't know how you do it. I couldn't do all that you do. I'm watching your body fall apart from the sidelines—you've had the same bruise on your foot that hasn't healed in over a month, and it's not just because you're not any good with healing charms. It takes a lot of energy to cast healing charms on yourself all the time, doesn't it? This hasn't happened overnight."

"It's—alright." He took a deep, shuddering breath and blinked up at the ceiling. "I have been pushing myself a _bit_ hard. No need to be grim about it. It's just difficult—"

"I saw your notes, Draco. In your workbook."

Draco physically recoiled. He drew his hands out from Harry's and turned away from him, covering his face with his hands.

" _Fuck_ ," he said. He sniffled, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve. "Fuck," he repeated.

"I thought you were just overworking yourself," Harry went on, "but what is happening, it hurts your mind, too. It dulls you, and nothing should be allowed to dull you. You're wonderfully sharp, it's part of what makes you so special. I didn't see it before, back in the fall, but I see it now. Now I understand—"

"You do not understand," Draco sucked in an awful breath. "You do not get to say that you understand."

"Will you help me, then? Because I can't help what I don't understand."

Draco licked his lips. He tapped a fingertip on the tabletop, contemplating something even as his mind seemed a million miles away.

"When did you know?"

"I still don't. The party. Pansy yelled at me that you were p—purging meals. She was drunk, and I didn't want to believe her, but then I saw _mandarins_ in your workbook, over and over, and it clicked. But also, it didn't."

"Why'd I go to rehab," Draco mumbled, nodding to himself. "Why'd I go to rehab." He stood and paced, one hand on his hip, the other at his chin as though he were trying to recall a speech. He radiated manic energy like the room was a cage and if he got this right, he'd be let loose from it.

"If you read my intake forms, they'd tell you that at the tender age of nineteen I was alcohol dependent, surprising no one." He stopped to cough and clear his throat, to keep it from wobbling. "Gin, straight, was my preference, though ten beer would do just as well for tea. I was a constant and avid user of all manner of drugs, but the opiate dependence was something of a marvel—cocaine became freebasing, which was, oh god, how to describe it? Like warm orgasms? I fucking _love_ drugs." He sighed and dug a finger into the knot of his tie to loosen it. "Love, too; not loved. I would do anything for—" he cut himself off. "Anyway, in the end even that became mundane, and I was injecting into my feet—"

"Injecting?"

"Oh. Heroin," he said like he was choosing between paper and plastic at checkout. "And for whatever reason, Harry, none of this disgusts you, though it should. The real reason they carted me off to convalesce in Surrey was that even though I considered Kronenbourgs dinner, I threw up whatever real food I did eat because I lost control. I was a mess back then, and it made me feel better. And maybe, I thought that I'd die slightly faster that way—not too fast, not the razors in the bath kind, because I could never bring myself to do that, but to speed up the inevitable, you know?"

Harry did know, sort of. That's what the blackouts had felt like, in a way. Oblivion. An ache for something that felt like nothing, and getting there at any cost. 

"And then Pansy read an article in a magazine about the dangers of bulimia on the heart, so she and Blaise decided that I was too much of a disaster to go on the way I was. They pooled all her bat mitzvah money and Blaise's life-savings at the time to put me up in a private Muggle rehab."

"Bulimia," Harry said. The word was foreign on his tongue. He'd read it and wondered, whispered it to himself before hastily closing web browser windows, but he hadn't been sure. It sounded like the name of an island nation, maybe, not the disease the drove Draco to destroy himself.

"Because we're sharing truths, I'll let you know I didn't even manage to get that right."

"What?"

"Bulimia," he said, quietly, like it had to be kept hush. "Even though I've been doing it since I was twelve, what I've got is an eating disorder, not otherwise specified. E-D-N-O-S. EDNOS." He snorted at the acronym. "Apparently I wasn't vomming enough to get a specified disorder."

"Twelve," Harry repeated. It seemed impossible. He remembered Draco, at twelve. Malfoy, then. Haughty; fantastic, though distracted during quidditch. He'd been pointier, his body struggling to catch up to a recent growth spurt. The sneers, and jibes, and under all that, already, so many scars. "That's over a decade ago."

"Yes. Twelve." Draco stopped his pacing and wiped his hands down the front of his shirt, looking at where they pressed over his flat stomach. "Here I am now, still stuck in this fucking body." He cracked his knuckles and looked around, up at the eves, down to his feet, then at Harry. "It's hot in here, isn't it? Can we go outside? I need air."

"Mm, uh yeah. Sure," Harry agreed, a little surprised. It wasn't warm, though Draco was, a sheen of sweat visible on his brow and cheekbones. Harry followed him up and outside, through to the back garden. A fog had settled in that felt permanent, wrapping the space in soft light. The garden was little more than soaked grass and gravel, cracked grey basalt tiles leading to wild, thorny hedges that Harry promised each year to find a way to tame. Draco lit a cigarette and continued pacing as Harry took to one of the two benches, glad to find it dry, though the stone was so cold that a shiver rippled through him to sit at it.

"You've been throwing up since you were twelve."

"It's not like that," Draco said, frowning, waving the lit cigarette around, lecturing. "It—I was a fat baby, remember? I continued in that vein for a while, and Lucius used to tap my belly and say I'd turn out like the elder Malfoys—portly fucks. Mum would say that I'd end up skinny like the Blacks even if it meant half-cantaloupes and cottage cheese. I was lucky when puberty hit early but, I worried. They already didn't like me much—"

"Draco—" Harry started, but he was waved off.

"No, don't do that—it's _fine_ , I just—Crabbe and Goyle would come over, and we'd order everything we could dream of from the kitchens, and I just—it was easier, to get rid of it after." He shrugged, and Harry nodded at him to continue, even though the thought blew his mind. They'd both been battling demons as children, then, one way or another. 

"Being twelve, I wasn't very good at hiding anything from anyone—plus I cut up my throat, using my wand to do it, which was so _stupid_." He sighed, lost in a memory. "After a couple of times, they told their parents, who told my parents, naturally—"

"And they did—what?"

Draco looked up like he'd only just then realized that Harry was still there. 

"Punished me for finding a new way to act like a fucking girl." He sucked at the cigarette, burned down dangerously close to his knuckles already. "It was—whatever. I was an insufferable suck for attention back then anyway, it's not like I didn't deserve it." Harry could only wonder what the word _punished_ held behind it. 

"Mum said she was disappointed that I hadn't inherited her self control." He gave a little smile. "I got better at hiding it. And controlling myself. I hate it, actually, the term _eating disorder_ —my eating is easily the most orderly thing about me." He crossed his arms tightly. "I was careful after that. Only did it when I needed to—once or twice a month, maybe, when school was on. More in the summer. By sixth year—" he shrugged. "By sixth year, things weren't going so well."

"But then, you got better, yeah? After rehab."

Draco flicked the butt up into the air and vanished it rather than say anything. 

"You were fine until me, right?" 

Draco crossed over to sit next to Harry, his look finally shifting into something that didn't hurt to look at. Patronizing, the way he gazed at from his slight height advantage.

"You didn't make me sick again."

Draco placed a hand to Harry's shoulder, warm and heavy and lovely, and he pushed it off. _He_ didn't need to be placated right now. 

"It started again once we decided to go public, didn't it? October, right?"

Draco gave a little gruff laugh, humourless. Surprised. 

"Don't try to find a way to make this your fault. Remember when I said since I was twelve? What part of _this precedes us_ don't you understand? And it's not a big deal, not really. You should see some of the other dancers vying to make it into a real company. I'm basically—"

Harry couldn't hear this. "I'm not saying it's my _fault_ , I'm saying that us, being out in the open. The headlines— _Harry Potter Caught with Death Eater—_ "

"Excuse me, it was _Harry Potter Caught Canoodling_ _with Death Eater Date_ ," Draco corrected, a half-smile on his lips. They had cracked again, scabbing down the centre line. 

"It's just— you can't control any of this shit. Your life isn't all yours anymore, and it never will be, so long as you're with me. But if you've gotten better before, why don't we find your therapist again? Or, or, maybe the clinic does outpatient. We could—"

"Harry, Harry, Harry. Stop," Draco pressed a finger, cold from having been resting against the stone beneath them for so long, against his lips. "Don't try to fix this. I'm fine. Listen to me—drop it."

"I can't." He struggled to find the words good enough to describe what he wanted to say, found that Draco's were the only ones he thought would do. "Remember when you told me that I deserve to feel good? To be happy? You deserve to feel good, too."

Draco brushed him off with an eye-roll and lit another cigarette, his composure coming back to him. Harry felt sure about this, felt like they were at a juncture where he could make him see sense.

_And what, save him? He won't let you. He'll avoid trying out of spite, and he's an adult. You cannot save him from himself._

Harry pushed the voice out of the way, like batting a fly buzzing about your ears. 

"And now I know all about this and look, look! I'm still here! I'm not going anywhere, there's nothing about you I'll ever find too much, or disgusting. You do not, cannot disgust me," Harry said, and Draco's eyelids lowered as he looked away, like he was ashamed to hear that. Harry knew that feeling, of it being too much when someone said _I see you,_ and knew that they cared for the parts of you that you didn't care for yourself. 

"I know you, and I love you. Surrey's not so far, even. Or we can find someone in town, there's bound to be loads of—"

"I never stopped, Harry." The words deflated Harry's talk like a pin in a balloon. They stopped him in his tracks. "I don't know how." 

"What do..." Harry shook his head. "What do you mean..."

"I'd love to act otherwise, but I never stopped. While I was in rehab, sure, I went the ninety days and got my weight up. But then I left, and I went back to what I needed to stay even. _I_ helped me, _I_ saved me, and I'm fine, really!" Draco was insistent, eyes wide and bright. He'd convinced himself that his words were true. "I hardly ever do it anymore. If I'm good and stick to a plan and keep track, I don't have to. It's enough for me. I'm doing fine, I'm doing _great_. Really."

"Hardly isn't never. Draco, with help, you could—"

Draco growled and stood again. "I've never talked to a therapist, okay? Alright? I'm glad it worked for you, I'm sure it's great to go a dozen times and talk your fucking depression away, but some of us don't—can't—it's just—"

"Is everything alright, masters?" 

Kreacher so thoroughly matched the colour of the outside retraining wall that Harry hadn't spotted him join them outside. He heaved a great sigh and turned to face the elf.

"You know what, Kreacher, we're not great." He gave a watery smile, and Kreacher frowned over at Harry, as though whatever was happening had to be his fault.

"Tea for the sirs, then. There is lemon drizzle scones, served in the lounge," Kreacher said. "Tea and less bickering," he walked off, mumbling, "they is bickering because the master is not offering enough gifts to the heir, not at all. If only he would listen to Kreacher, but oh, what does Kreacher know of it..." 

Harry could laugh at the insanity of it all, the banality, and they watched as the crotchety old elf hobbled away, grumbling about letting in the draft as he closed the door to the garden behind him with a burst of magic.

When Harry spoke again, it was with calm in his voice. After this, after all, there'd be scones. No one was going anywhere, not anymore. There would be no stampeding away from one another, of this, he felt sure as bedrock.

"What do you mean you've never talked to a therapist? You were there, weren't you?"

Draco coughed again, and Harry gave him a look, and it was enough to get him to stub out the cigarette and not immediately light another. 

"Sure, I was there, in body, but we didn't _talk,_ talk. I spent three sessions in silence, and she said we didn't have to talk about the drugs, or drink, or eating, or lack thereof. ' _It's your time, you can use it how you like'._ " He shrugged. "I brought her the words other people in group used that I didn't understand, and she taught me those, and we talked about other things."

"What?"

"Yeah," Draco said brightly like this wasn't patently insane. "Waitrose. Posh Spice. Telly."

Something clicked in Harry's memory. "Electricity. The Queen. She just...taught you the meaning of Muggle words?"

"Yes, well, it was a bit more expansive than that. I'd call a lot of them concepts, rather than words."

"Draco," Harry said warningly. Draco responded with a narrowing of his eyes and a scowl that was more like a pout. 

"It was what I needed then, more than wheedling on about my parents—"

Harry scoffed. "And the war you went through? The people you saw die?"

"I didn't need to talk about those things. I needed to look forwards." He sat again and gestured, chopping the air. _Forwards_. "To talk to at least one other person, every day, to keep from sinking too low. To learn how to do anything for myself, without magic, which was fucking _hard_ , Harry. I was more helpless than a baby, no clue about anything outside the few square miles of the magical world I'd known."

"You should have talked about that," Harry tried, but Draco only shook his head to keep from hearing the words.

"Talking didn't matter, _doing_ mattered. I learned how to survive, and that took concentration, and I did it. Focused on my studies, which were my ticket out of penury, and out from under my parent's thumb. That meant staying away from drugs and drink and keeping my weight up enough that I didn't land in there again, which meant structure. Decorum. I'm great at decorum," he nudged his shoulder against Harry's, trying to dig a smile from him. "Lest I ruin my teeth or worry Pansy and Blaise again, and it's worked. I've been fine. Better than fine, I'm—right now, I'm fabulous. I'm great."

"They're worried again, though. You've never talked to anyone about any of it, have you?"

"Can't some things be dealt with by not talking about them?" Draco asked, and Harry thought how uncanny it was, that that was almost verbatim what he'd asked Hermione after the war, when he'd just moved into Grimmauld. _Isn't there a saying that some things are better left unsaid?_ She'd had to practically hex him to go see a Mind Healer at first. Harry could see now that they hadn't been a good fit, and it hadn't been the right time for him, rather than that he'd been unfixable.

"If you can't talk about them, you can't let them go. You're brilliant at talking, Draco," he nudged his shoulder back. "Tell me you'll give it a chance."

Draco spoke slowly, like what he was telling Harry required explaining. "What I'm telling you is that I'm actually alright."

"You're acting like it's alright. Like I've been acting like everything's fine when this has been eating away at me." He winced. "Sorry, not—fuck, that wasn't—"

If Draco's lips had been hovering on a smile, he scowled properly now. "Don't you dare go mincing words around me." 

"I promised myself when we started again—no more secrets."

"That's impossible, though." He swatted a hand between them. "Everyone has secrets. Even right now, how many more secrets would you say that you have from me?" 

Harry answered without thought.

"None that I'm keeping from you. I have memories I haven't shared, but they're not secrets. We just haven't gotten to them yet."

"That's an Auror's answer."

"That's the truth," Harry asserted. "I was keeping your secret _from_ you, and it tore me up to know it."

"This is what I get for consorting with Gryffindors." 

Harry snorted. "What we're doing is a lot more than consorting."

When Harry looked up from the crack in the stone bench he'd been staring at, he found Draco watching him expectantly. His eyes that stormy grey they went in foul weather, wreathed in those fucking translucent eyelashes that Harry so adored, in that handsome face that Harry still wasn't sure if he was obsessed or in love with. What if with them, it was the same feeling?

"How about you? How many secrets are you keeping from me, still?"

"An ocean," Draco said, smiling crookedly while Harry slumped. 

"Are any so big that you think that to know them, I'd leave you?" 

"Well, some of them are the size of small seas, so," Draco trailed off.

"Take this seriously, please. For me. I'm wrung out, I—I never wanted to worry over someone the way I worry about you."

"I'm sorry, but if you want me, you have to take me and my ocean of secrets. I'm a Slytherin, after all."

Harry really was tired. The conversation wasn't going to be resolved in an afternoon, but he could see a long haul ahead of them. Inside there were scones, and ahead, days, and weeks, and months, and years and years to try to unravel all the frayed and twisted bits of yarn that made up their memories and habits, healthy and terrifying alike.

"I think that I'm a freak, sometimes, but you're impossible, you know that? Bloody impossible."

"If you ask the Prophet, apparently I'm actually comically easy," he said. Harry struggled to keep his composure at the joke, and then, like he needed to offer something as an olive branch, Draco sighed and blurted, "I thought you were someone else, the night we met."

"What?"

"I thought you were him. Which is crazy. But, maybe I'm crazy, I mean, probably, logically, _yes,_ I am almost definitively crazy," he stopped and caught his breath. "The other night too, when I woke you up. I thought you were him again. He was in my dreams. That's the only dream I ever try to avoid, honestly, because it always feels so real. Someone I haven't seen in years."

"Is this a secret you’ve wanted to tell me?"

Draco shrugged and nodded all at once. When his shoulders caved like that, he looked seventeen again. 

"What's his name?" Harry asked softly. 

"I don't know."

"Did you love him?"

"It's complicated," he looked to his hands, lost in memory. "No. I thought I did, I guess. It really is complicated."

"Could you make it not complicated, and tell me?"

"Can I do that another day? I'm tired."

Harry nodded. They were still enough that the sound of raindrops was audible on the roots and pebbles around them. Harry scanned the ground, eyes attracted to strange green shoots poking through the soil. He'd never known anything to grow in the garden, and yet here things were.

"What are those?" He pointed, and Draco followed the line of his finger.

"This time of year, daffodils, maybe. The yellow ones."

"I know what a _daffodil_ is," Harry muttered. 

"I'll like to give descriptions anyways. Helps with my own memory." He was lying—it was because he knew that Harry didn't know the names of most flora or fauna and wanted to save him the discomfort of asking. It was sweet.

Draco spoke to him, though he kept his eyes trained on the young shoots. "I'm trying, Harry. I'll try harder. I'll talk to someone who isn't you, but I need time to warm up to the idea—god forbid I take my own incredible advice and discover it actually helps _me_ , too. Perhaps I'll talk to your man?"

Harry sucked his teeth. "Martin specializes in cases like mine. Family trauma, grief." Draco made a humming sound, and Harry scrunched up his face, speaking with his eyes closed the way that always made it easier. "Childhood abuse—stuff. PTSD."

Draco cocked his head on the side and nodded. "Of course," he said. "Silly of me to think—"

"Not silly at all. He could suggest someone for you to talk to, with the right specializations." 

"I'm sure they're going to be a barrel of laughs. How am I to pay someone who specializes in major depression _and_ eating disorders _and_ addictions _and_ —" His joking tone cut off as he remembered something that was very clearly a secret the size of an ocean. 

"I'll pay for it," Harry said without thinking. It seemed obvious to him, and he wanted to paint over that fact quickly, refused to let it become a sticking point. He held up a hand and, astonishingly, Draco didn't begin squawking about it. "Please don't fight me on it. I'll authorize it through Sparks, he'll set up an account off my main vault. I ought to just fund therapy for everyone in our year who needs it." He rubbed the back of his neck as Draco made the sound he made when he was thinking.

"Not such a bad idea, actually. Ties in nicely with the push for a wing at Mungo's. And there's the added bonus for shaming the Ministry by beating them to it."

The thought made Harry grin properly. The lump in his throat was softening, and he felt light. 

"I think that finding someone with all those qualifications sounds like a challenge that's probably not all that difficult, actually. London's a big city, and it's not like these things happen in a vacuum."

"You're right," Draco said. He sounded tired. "I hate how often it is that you're actually right."

"Do you want to talk about any of it," Harry asked, "with me, I mean?"

Draco shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it with anybody, but I'm acquiescing to you on account of I love you, you dreadful, always-fucking-helpful thing. Oceans of secrets, remember," he said again. 

A thought sprung to Harry's mind suddenly, as the smell of earth and rain filled their nostrils. "Can I show you something, then?"

"As long as it's not a bottle of Veritaserum, count me in," Draco groused, and then he took Harry's proffered hand.

Harry pulled him around the corner to the plain stone wall at the west side of the house.

"Go on," he gestured. Draco looked puzzled, but pressed a hand against the stone and watched without comment as it floated directly through.

"Has this always been here?"

"Not a clue," Harry answered. "I only noticed this week when I was taking pictures out here to send to Neville, get his opinion on how to fix things up this year, and everything I tried to lean onto it fell through. Careful, actually—" he threw an arm out to keep Draco from walking on.

"Let me go first. I might have left a rake or something in there."

He stepped through and was luckily not accosted by an errant gardening tool, and Draco quickly followed. The garden nook wasn't all that impressive, a few metres square, space enough for a picnic blanket or a hammock and not much else. The courtyard was visible from some rooms in the house, and its strongest feature was the new towering, spiky plant-life that filled the space.

"I've never been in here before," Harry said, "but what I do know is that these plants weren't here before. They shot up sometime recently and haven't stopped growing all winter. They _seem_ benign, even considering all the spikes—"

"They're tea roses," Draco interrupted him. He looked up, lit by the blue-white light of the dying day, awe in his eyes.

"Roses? Really?"

Draco nodded; lips smashed together. "Yes. _Tea_ roses, specifically. They're fragrant, all colours, and they kind of," he circled a finger tightly, "spiral out from the centre. The more you cut them back, the higher they grow. It's the wrong season for them, but you said they just appeared?"

"Mmhmm," Harry sidled behind Draco, whose outstretched hand brushed against a branch, fingertip light against a thorn the size of his pinky nail. "I do know them, actually. There was a bush my aunt made me hack down and rip out. It never bloomed for her."

"These are two stories high, already," Draco gasped. "They'll be so beautiful when they bloom. These will, for us. You can see the buds pushing in already—see?"

Something became clear for Harry, the reverential way that Draco spoke about them. He hugged him closely from behind, soaking in his scent, sending hot breath down his collar as he settled his chin on his shoulder.

"They're your favourite, aren't they?" Draco didn't say anything, but Harry thought that had more to do with tightness in his throat than for lack of wanting.

"I think these are for you," he whispered into his ear. "The house must have missed you while you were away. I know I missed you."

"If you say something corny to me about moving in and putting down roots, I'll sock you directly in the bollocks," Draco drawled, so Harry only tugged him closer and smiled, thinking of tea, and futures filled with gifts fit for princes.

* * *

**Notes:** Ahhh. That felt good. Congratulations on making it through the first week of 2021! We made it!

Chapter title from The Picture of Dorian Grey, by Oscar Wilde. "Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!” I imagine it's the book Draco was reading in the bath, and lent to Harry, because wouldn't that be something?

Take care. **Next chapter by Friday, January 29** (though, as always, I aim to get it to you long before that). xx


	20. Isn't It Grand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco arrives three times.

* * *

**Saturday, February 28, 2004**

Harry woke slowly, turning over and stretching out, spread eagle across the width of the mattress. He was warm and still very under the blankets, contemplating the prospect of indulging in a morning pull with Draco's pillow as scented assistance when the object of his wandering mind re-entered the bedroom.

With a look of deep concentration from behind the reading glasses he refused to admit he needed, a black plastic biro clenched between his teeth, two cups of tea clutched by their handles in one hand due to the notebook in the other and a square glass contraption squashed under his arm, he looked like a far sight from the perfectly pressed Draco of weekdays. Fair wisps of incoming fringe stuck up at an alarming angle on the left side of his head, begging Harry to smooth them flat.

He spat the pen on the bed as Harry accepted the mug floating over to him.

"What?"

Harry's eyes widened. _The cheek._

"What, what? I didn't say anything." Sitting up properly, he decided to do nothing to hide the tenting of the bedspread between his legs. “You’re not supposed to be here right now." He fumbled for his wand and cast a _Tempus_ , looking incredulously between the time and Draco. "I thought you left over an hour ago."

Draco pursed his lips and dropped the things in his hands to the foot of the bed, crawling to sit cross-legged on top.

"I was going to, but got distracted. I thought you'd be up by now. Do you always sleep in this late?" He blew on his tea and pulled the notebook into his lap, flipping it open with a louche motion of his free hand before wiggling his fingers to summon the pen, his note-making beginning afresh. "Stop giving me that weird look." 

Dressed only in his favourite oversized stripey t-shirt and pair of pants (Harry couldn't see them, but knew Saturday's were always black), and even with a thin white line of dried spit still on his cheek, he still had the air of a very underdressed librarian. Or a mad scientist. Or both.

"You look adorable," Harry said, blowing on his tea. There was nothing like a well-placed compliment to throw Draco for a loop, and now was no exception. It stopped him writing, pen tip pressed deeply into the paper, unmoving.

"Shut up," he muttered, waving Harry off. Harry took a careful sip—Lady Grey, Draco's favourite, but not his—sure that if he was patient enough, things would be revealed.

"You're staring," Draco said a few minutes later. Harry hummed happily.

“I am.”

Draco's nostrils flared, but he didn't look up. Instead, he flipped the page he'd been scribbling on over, read something quickly, flipped it back.

"Care to illuminate me as to why?" His drawl was textbook snarky Malfoy, straight out of the fantasies Harry had been indulging in lately. 

Harry sipped his tea, continued right on staring. A grin formed, wide, revealing all his teeth, especially the crooked couple on the edges of his smile. It would earn him further exasperation from Draco. He didn't mind it in the least.

"Because I like it," he said tritely. "I don't get to see you like this often. Or at this time, generally. Aren't you late to head out?"

"Not running today," Draco mumbled, frowning down at the page. Harry peeked—it looked like long division. He settled back into the pillows stacked behind him—there wasn't a chance in hell he'd be able to figure it out, not upside down, without his glasses on.

"Oh. Well, that's—"

"I'm not running on Saturdays anymore," Draco elaborated. "Sundays either. Well, probably not. It depends." He capped the pen and placed it on the bedside table, eyes darting over the equations before him and with a little nod of self-satisfaction, passed the notebook to Harry.

His squinted at it, bringing it within inches of his face. "What am I looking at?" The page was written with so many abbreviations, numbers small and big, that Harry had no clear clue what it was on about.

“I don't have time for you to squint at it all morning," he huffed, summoning Harry's glasses and thrusting them at him, "Try with your specs on, for Merlin's sake." He helped Harry with his mug, the exasperated look Harry had been expecting making an appearance. Once Harry was ready, he pointed to the hand-drawn chart taking up a good half of the page.

"It's my plan. For gaining a stone." He was twitchy, eyes flicking to meet Harry's and then back to the chart.

 _Nerves. He's nervous about this_.

Harry opened his mouth, but then his stomach gurgled.

"Sorry," he said. Draco's shoulders settled a little lower—it was enough of an interruption for him to cut in, all the words he'd been holding back spilling out.

"I was up two stone, three years ago, so I _can_ do it. That was my high weight, and at the time it felt—well, not fantastic, I wasn't exactly comfortable, but that had more to do with end-stage Noah than with—it doesn’t matter—it was alright. Bearable." He sucked in a great breath, and Harry finally licked his thumb and wiped the line from his cheek, an excuse to touch him, if only for a few seconds. He didn't pull away.

"I did it on purpose then, and I can do it again now.”

"Why, then?" Harry lowered the notebook but kept looking at it. The two-page spread was meticulously organized—Draco used a charmed biro so that he could move paragraphs around. He hadn't just given the notes sections; he'd written in headers. _Sub_ -headers.

Draco pulled a pillow into his lap, resting his nervous hands upon it. "I was taking dance more seriously back then, trying out for gigs and photoshoots, and needed to put on muscle for _pas de deux_. Partnered dancing, you know—" he shrugged, slotting in warmly against Harry's side, "lifts and such. It got to the point where I could eat just about whatever I wanted, and the numbers on the scale didn't change."

Harry wanted to say so many things. That he could do that again, and should. That he could do anything he wanted, anything he set his mind to. He could go out right now and put in an order at Domino's or McDonald's or the local greasy spoon, an order that would have made Dudley jealous, and polish off the whole thing, and Harry could keep him from physically _getting rid of it._ That he needn't be waifish to be attractive. Harry wanted simple words and actions to be the answer. In that way, he thought, it could be easy.

But by the way he worried his lip, and how he couldn’t hold Harry’s eyes for more than a second—Harry could see that this plan full of sub-headers was already a loosening of Draco's code of conduct, and a stressful one at that. And it dawned on him that the things Harry and others did without thought, Draco couldn't. Nothing about this, for him, was easy.

_If it were easy, he would have stopped a long time ago. He can't, he really, truly can't. He would if he could, and he can't. Not yet. Not like you wish he could. But he's trying._

"Say something," Draco said softly. His magic had a pulsing aura around him—Harry could smell it, almost—the deep green of eucalyptus, the edge of petitgrain. These were the wisps of solid, protective herbs. Harry took a deep breath, hoping that his voice could remain light, refusing to let Draco misinterpret him processing his feelings as disapproval.

"This is a very thorough plan to have come up with overnight," Harry began.

“I did it all this morning.”

"That’s even more impressive,” Harry said, dodging the swat to his shoulder, somehow managing not to spill his tea in the interim. Draco mildly piqued was much better than Draco nervous. “Could you take me through it?" he asked gently.

Draco was eager to. What Harry had thought to be a chart was revealed as a calendar, with new pluses and minuses planned for each day, only in this version, the final tally steadily went up, up, up. The entire next page was a list of rules, some of which were obvious, and some so minute, Harry couldn't believe that one person could keep track of such minutiae in their mind at any one time. Certain foods previously eaten in groups of three could now be done in sixes. Things once forbidden were allowed, albeit rarely. Black coffee could go milky, with _milk,_ however, not cream. And so forth. When he was finished reading them, Draco covered the list with his wide, spiderlike hand spread across the lines of ink.

"These are for me, not for you. If I break one, I have to tell you, though, and that should be incentive enough not to.

Harry internally recoiled at the thought. If he'd learned anything in therapy, it was that healing didn't have anything to do with winning or losing; the opposite of positive reinforcement wasn't meant to be punishment.

"What am I supposed to do?"

Draco shrugged. "Nothing. You're made of some sort of impossibly kind Chosen-One-cum-Golden-Boy material—"

"Don't call me names," Harry interrupted. Draco rolled his eyes.

"—alright, whatever, you're often such a flipping honest, good little Gryffindor about things, and as such keep refusing to be disappointed in me, but I'll be plenty disgusted with myself for the both of us."

"Draco,” Harry said, and then he went quiet. He wasn’t sure what to say anyway.

"Hush.” He snapped the book shut and set it aside, removing his glasses and folding them on top. “Whatever you're going to say, don't. If you go all soft on me right now, I couldn’t bear it. Act normal, will you?"

Harry nodded. Draco was like a witness dying to spill information. Stay silent long enough and it leaked out of them all on its own. “Okay."

They sat together, breathing for a while. Harry's tea was losing heat too fast for his liking; Draco wrinkled his nose at his warming charm.

"Utter philistine,” he muttered.

"It's only _tea_ ," Harry countered.

Draco made a face. "Yes, only one of the most revolutionary traditional food products to ever leave China and become a key tool in the biggest colonial projects of modern human history." Then, “Don't you have questions?"

_There it is._

Harry stared at the glass square at the foot of the bed. He slid down and poked at it from under the covers with his big toe.

"What's this do?"

"Digital scale. I used to lug it back and forth from my flat to here, but I might as well keep it out in the open now. I think it should stay up here, and I'll only use it in the morning." He nodded in agreement with himself. "Once a day."

"You weigh yourself every day?"

Draco gave a little self-deprecating smile. "More than once. Once is cutting back."

Harry stared at it. "What about the counting. You're still counting everything. Could you stop that?"

"Not yet."

He poked the scale again, nudging it till its long edge hung precariously over the edge of the bed. This touch turned it on, candy red zero's for eyes glowing up from an electronic screen. "Could we kill it? Give it a proper funeral out back? I could probably AK it for you."

Draco considered it. A dimple appeared in one cheek. Dimples were good. "Not yet. Maybe—maybe soon. But, not yet."

Harry sighed, swiping his wand hand in its direction to levitate it under the armoire.

"Okay."

"Since you're too polite to ask, I'm almost nine. Stone."

Harry floundered for a bit like a trout that had reeled in, gasping at the edge of a lake. He wasn't sure what to say to that. Nine stone had been a milestone for him after he'd left the Dursley's for good. And then ten, and by the time he'd hit eleven, he'd stopped counting. Eleven and some odd pounds—less when stressed and drinking to blot the world out, and more when he'd been paying attention to building muscle, and eating _and_ drinking. He hadn't considered figuring out where he'd landed, now—it hadn't occurred to him to care about his weight without a Ministry-appointed Healer to perform a diagnostic charm on him every six months.

But Draco hadn't said nine stone, had he? He said _almost_. _Almost_ nine stone on Draco was probably eight stone and thirteen pounds, because one hundred and twenty-five had a nice ring to it, and he liked those numbers. Whether galleons or pounds, he kept them in groups of fives, repeated. Six in change meant the extra left on the table, always. This was a habit Harry had noticed and thought of as a quirk. It was interesting, the longer he knew Draco, the more his quirks had a habit of building up into patterns of behaviour. 

_Almost_ nine stone was the last time Harry outright refused meals, the grief of Sirius' death too much to bear. It was inheriting Grimmauld Place, and Draco stomping his nose flat to his face, and every other shit thing that had happened during that, overall, shit year. But he'd sprouted up that year, and put on some weight while at Hogwarts, at least. He hadn't had a scale or the time to care about one during the year that followed, but he'd plummeted back to thereabout's again.

"Once I hit ten, I'll reassess. Think about cutting back on the counting, though I don't know if that's possible, as I know all the numbers in my head. It would be an imposition because if I'm not writing them down it’s only because I'm doing the calculations internally, and that leads to uncertainty, and that is what leads to the—" He sucked in a great breath. "Sorry. Rambling."

"'S'alright," Harry said. "Did you have something on your calendar about seeing a professional?" Draco shook his head.

"Baby steps. Phase one is research. This month, I'm looking."

"Phase two is..."

"The consideration phase," Draco elaborated. "Next month, I'll consider what my research has led me to."

"Ah," Harry said, nodding knowingly. "The scientific method."

They shared a smile. Draco's faded quickly as he picked the surface of his shirt. The oversized things he owned were the only ones well-worn enough to have pilled over time. Harry knew now that they were for the time he spent alone, as well as the time he felt comfortable enough in front of another person to admit how uncomfortable he was in his body. They were things meant for hiding in—his Invisibility Cloak.

"I'm sorry I'm like this," he said, head bowed. Harry cupped his chin to pull it up until they saw eye to eye.

"I like you just the same, like this. I'm sorry I didn't see all of you before."

"Don't be," Draco's thumb scratched at the stubble pushing in along his jaw. "I didn't let you."

The look became heated, the way it almost always did when they were close and connected skin to skin. Harry breathed him in and remembered all too well where his mind had been wandering long minutes before.

"Will you let me see all of you now?"

He leaned in for the kiss that was already waiting for him, tea-scented and warm. They lay back and the few clothes between them were quickly divested. Harry thrilled in the feel of his arm pressed in the warm crook behind Draco's knee as he slid his hand up the bed, holding him down and open at the same time. When they both came long minutes later into the wide bowl of Draco's belly, Harry lay to his side and marvelled at the milky wetness held in the expanse of his bone-white skin. He hoped that soon, when he watched his lover breathe in, that liquid would spill out and run down his sides instead of pool in the hollow where his scars crossed and his belly button furled in like the knot of a balloon.

Draco giggled when Harry licked where his ribs ended and his waist began. The sound trailed off as he kissed his sternum, and the softness of his stomach when he wasn't flexing. He sighed while Harry lapped at their come, and traced his sides with fingertips that buzzed at the touch.

"What are you doing?" Draco asked at length. Harry vanished the drying come before it went sticky and lay his cheek to his stomach, his belly to the mattress, not caring about his arm curled awkwardly underneath him. He closed his eyes as Draco's fingers found his scalp and scratched, then started to work, carding through the knots hidden in the inky strands of his hair.

"Seeing you now."

* * *

**Sunday, February 29, 2004**

Mid-afternoon saw Harry tucking in to the kind of sandwich he could only really enjoy alone. Kreacher was...somewhere. His schedule of coming and going was so sporadic that Harry no longer bothered calling out to see if he was within the house, as he too often Apparated back from Hogwarts or elsewhere, and Harry always felt like a sod to have interrupted his day only to ask if he knew where his other sock might have sauntered off to, or whether the milk smelled off.

The issue with his preferred sandwich was that it was so towering in height—three kinds of meats and mayonnaise, grainy and yellow mustard, a variety of cheeses, and sprouts, lettuce and more cheese, and sliced shallot, and sure, throw on the salami, why not, it was there for eating, wasn't it?—that the thick wedges of tomato he crammed in turned its insides into a slippery mess, which caused about a third of it to spill out onto his plate (though his fingers were quick to grab large, errant chunks of things to pop back into his mouth). It was a disgusting way to eat, the sort that would have sent Aunt Petunia into fits over, and Harry fucking _loved_ it.

It was therefore unexpected when, only just beginning on the mastication journey with his latest sandwich monstrosity, he heard the front door slam, and then, a bark of something like laughter.

"Dra'o?" He struggled to make sounds without choking. "Zatchoo?"

His call was answered by swiftly clicking boot heels and soon, sure enough, Draco appeared. Flushed, he strode in and tossed his messenger bag along with a rather large box from Fatima's to the table.

Harry struggled to swallow a bite but didn't bother putting his luncheon down to wipe his face. Not when he still had so much mess left to go.

He chose to ignore Draco's eyes widening at the thing in his hands.

"I thought you were going home for the day?"

"I was. I did." He sprawled into a chair, peeling his eyes away from judging Harry to instead stare airily at the ceiling. When he ran his hands through his hair, Harry noticed his nails were painted black—no, not black. A deep, high-shine blue.

"Then I got bored. So I went out." The smile on his face refused to quit.

"What have you done?" Harry resisted the urge to frown as he continued attacking the sandwich. He shouldn't feel worried to see Draco so... _happy_. But it was odd, still.

_And odd is often another way to put dangerous._

"Well, first I found a Costa to get some work done, but my Bubblehead Charm had nothing on the babies screaming in there, and then Pans texted to ask if I'd go robes shopping with her. And I immediately thought of what kind of glamour to use, and where we could go where we wouldn’t be noticed, and then I thought—fuck it."

“‘ust ‘uckit?” Harry hoped his eyebrows conveyed adequate surprise as he took another massive bite, narrowly escaping the inhale of a cloud of sprouts. Draco's top lip quivered with disgust. He quickly looked away to examine his nails, avoiding comment.

"Exactly. I met her in Diagon, and we went shopping. And then for manicures at a new place off Knockturn that wasn't half as shady as I assumed it would be. And _then_ for chai in Hogsmeade." He glanced at Harry; the weird smile was back. "We sat in the windows of Puddifoots."

Harry did inhale something down the wrong pipe at that last, launching into an awful coughing fit that left him red, glasses fogged.

"You're joking,” he managed to choke out. The sandwich had to be briefly lowered in favour of serious talk.

Draco shrugged. "I swear on Morgana's tits, I'm not."

"I—" Harry had a thousand questions, first and foremost _W_ _hat the fuck were you thinking?_ , but was overcome by how jubilant Draco seemed. He could practically hear Hermione and Martin reminding him that these moments were rare and pure, and to try to enjoy them when they happened.

"I—I like the blue," he managed. 

"It's good, isn't it?" Draco wiggled the painted digits in his direction. "Thank you. I've been feeling a tad goth lately, but I thought black was too obvious."

Harry waited a beat. There. He'd had fun. Managed a spot of lightheartedness.

 _Now, time to get back to worrying_.

"Were you followed?"

Draco's smile grew wider. "Oh, yes. Extensively."

"And?" He chanced it with a mid-sized bite. A full slice of tomato snuck into his mouth with it. That’d keep him busy while Draco spoke, hopefully for as long as it took for any of what he was saying to make sense.

"You should expect a thorough print exposé in the coming days about how I steered Pansy away from this violet coloured _mess_ that was going to wash her out completely, which she already has, like, four of. I was a true friend, and pushed her out of her comfort zone of last years gauze and towards some pieces that are very, oh, I’d say Zach Posen? She's going to look like a verified lady this year, mark my words." Draco closed his eyes, basking in the memory. “I sat in the window of Puddifoot's so they’d get my right side—which is my best side, mind you—so I should look very dashing in the photos. Pans might have flashed her knickers getting out of her chair, the tart's skirts are so inspiringly short. It’s going to be _hilarious_.”

Harry attempted a stern tone, which was difficult to accomplish whilst chewing.

"'A-oh.”

"Yes?" Draco asked, actually fluttering his lashes.

Harry swallowed thickly. "Be serious."

"I am!” He pushed back from the table, subconsciously crossing his arms, on the defensive. “I figured, my hair is behaving and I _feel_ good, for bloody once, and if someone had told child-me that one day I'd be Harry Potter's boyfriend and everyone would want a photo of me, and I could order whatever I wanted at Madame Puddifoot's and pay for it with my very own grown-up galleons that I earned _myself_ , and pick out my own outfits, and accessorize how I saw fit, and paint my nails if I wanted to, I would have been terrified that they knew my big, gay secret, and then I'd be _thrilled_ because it would mean that I was cool and famous, and guess what? I fucking _am_ , and I'm choosing to have a good time."

Harry found it very difficult to finish grinding his meal down to a swallowable paste through the want to grin, but somehow managed, finishing on a surprise belch. Draco'd used the word _boyfriend_ and Harry, suck that he was, swooned over hearing it every time.

The burp brought the stinkiest look from Draco Harry had received in possibly, ever.

"Has anyone ever told you that sometimes you eat like a—”

“Love-starved orphan? Yeah, it's come up,” He gave his most wicked grin to Draco, who was busy trying to look like he was disgusted, even as he ran his tongue along his bottom lip.

"I don't know what I see in you," Draco said. That he stared at Harry's mouth negated his words, tenfold.

"I'm sure you can imagine a few things you'd like to see in me," Harry swiped a finger through a dollop of creamy mustard and licked the finger clean, even as his cheeks warmed. If anyone was acting like a tart today, it was surely him. 

Draco's jaw tensed as he swallowed thickly. “You shouldn’t look at me like that or I'm liable to do bad things to you.”

"Draco?"

His eyes flicked up to meet Harry's from under heavy lids.

"Yes?"

The stare built into something charged. Holding someone’s eyes was like that—and when they were Draco’s— _fuck._

"That's...that's fucking great."

He kept great control of his features, though Harry knew it was at a cost. The smile was implied.

"Yes, well. It _was_ fucking great. I haven't visited Hogsmeade as myself in years. I brought back your laptop, by the way," he gestured at the messenger bag between them. "It's a tragedy when Costa Coffee has better internet than you do. You should have the house re-wired."

The cupboards in the kitchen slapped violently on their hinges, startling both men into sitting up straight as boards, eyes wide.

"Or, not," Draco eyed the cupboards for further responses.

"What did you need it for?"

"My own business," he answered tritely.

"You know that computers keep a history of your business?" Harry asked. That Draco didn't visibly react was impressive.

"I...didn't know this. How does one go about Obliviating a computer?"

Harry contained his smile. "I'll show you later. And you don't have to tell me what you were doing. I was just curious."

Draco jut his bottom lip out, considering as he slouched back into his chair. "I was looking for doctors."

The _Can I ask..._ was nearly out of Harry's mouth when he bit it back.

_Be direct. Say what you mean, ask for what you want._

"Why not Healers instead? I mean, it could be useful to talk to someone who knows you're a wizard."

"Could be useful to talk to someone who doesn't recognize my family name, too." Draco eyed something across the room and summoned it towards him with a flick of his wand. A shiny green apple zoomed over, and he gave it a thorough inspection for imperfections before taking a great bite from it. That Draco refused to touch even lightly bruised apples, or bananas with a hint of brown on them drove Harry halfway to madness, but when he ate them the way he was this apple, Harry forgot just how annoying the blond could sometimes be. He had to use a finger to push a piece back into his mouth, the flesh shiny wet, and now Harry knew why watching him eat had managed to arouse the other. Just thinking about Draco's mouth was enough to raise his cock's interest in a tumble. A frot. Something. Anything, with that mouth.

Draco broke the lull in the conversation.

"Though it won't be my name for much longer, so perhaps this is all quite short-sighted,” he sighed, munching on.

"What do you mean?"

"The fine print of the disowning proceedings. Unless I capitulate, I forfeit the use of the family name. I've been graciously provided a year with which to find a new one." Draco said this with the quickest flick of his eyes to Harry, causing his heart rate to skyrocket at the weird implication that look held before his brain even sorted out what it could mean. Should Harry offer...his?

"But," Draco added quickly, “I intend to sort it long before that. I'll ask mum if I can use her maiden name."

"That's so fucked."

Draco snorted. "Yes. Tis."

"So you'll be Draco Black?"

"Yep." He crunched on the apple, squinting at Harry. "You clearly didn't understand that letter I showed you at all, did you?"

"I hardly had a chance to read it." He struggled to think of a comeback that wasn't rude. _You were doing a very good impression of a Victorian poet about a hair's breadth away from filling their pockets with stones and walking to the bottom of the sea?_ No, that would never fly. "There were more pressing things to attend to at the time?"

"It's alright." Draco inspected what was left of the apple, shiny black seeds suspended in white flesh, and balanced the remains on the tabletop between them. "I don't mind being the brains _and_ the beauty in this relationship."

There it was. The stare was back, this time with the addition of a subtly raised brow. A challenge—who would admit to wanting it first?

"What's that leave for me? Beast? Brawn?"

"Both," Draco replied. "It's a good thing you're disarmingly handsome."

Harry didn't mind doing the asking.

"Handsome enough to take advantage of you on this table?"

Draco chewed the inside of his lip, considering it.

"Maybe later. I was going to do some reading, and there was a program Pansy said we had to catch this evening, so I ought to get the work out of the way now, before..."

He trailed off. He'd noticed Harry's puff of breath, and the slump of his shoulders at effectively being told, _later_. Or maybe he'd noticed the pitch of his thoughts shifting to whatever they sounded like when he was peeved. Draco didn't frown, though—he smiled a little. Dangerously.

"Does that upset you," he spoke slowly, quietly, "pet?"

A fucking call out. If he wasn’t sure it would be taken poorly, Harry would have hissed a joking _How dare you?_ Well. Half-joking. As it was, he massaged a palm and stared at it rather than at the smirk growing on Draco's face.

"No. I'm not _upset_."

"Yes, you are. You're allowed to be upset, you know."

Harry inhaled, hoping oxygen would cool his overheated brain, but it did nothing for it. He felt—what? Foolish? Like he was a little boy grasping for candy, and Draco was somehow both the sweet and the guardian of it, rapping his knuckles with a ruler for having overreached.

"I'll ask you once. Would you like to play right now? With me?"

Harry thought of being stubborn, saying something pithy and heading out to work in the garden. Throw on a pair of dragonhide gloves and rip out those shrubs for once and for all, work out all the energy that yes, _obviously_ he'd rather spend in some kind of sexual tussle with Draco. That it had to be said seemed uncalled for, but his difficulty in asking for it was part of its illicit fun.

"Yes," Harry said, releasing his hands and taking hold of the seat beneath him. He raised his gaze to meet Draco's over the top rim of his glasses, "sir."

That Draco let himself smile at all showed how the answer pleased him.

"Very well. Go upstairs and undress in the bedroom. Fold your clothes away, neatly. Prepare yourself, and then kneel beside the bed."

Harry's cock pulsed at the thought. Now that was more like it. His lips parted only to scrape out the words, "Yes, sir."

Draco cocked his head, staring at him. It wasn't a cold stare, but it was calculating. He was planning everything that was going to happen, already knew exactly what would and wouldn’t. It was up to Harry to wait and be good, like prey that decides to stop running and see what happens when they lie still instead, belly up. Vulnerable. With patience, Draco’s plan would be revealed to him. It made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

"I want your knees wider than your shoulders. Hold your hands together behind your back and keep your eyes on the floor, even after I enter. _Do not_ touch yourself. Not once. Can you do all that for me, pet?"

"Yes, sir."

Draco responded with a downright carnal smile.

"Good. You can go now. I'll be along."

* * *

Harry's shoulders hurt.

Not just his shoulders, though. The muscles to keep the blades pulled tight over his ribs, spiralling down his back. He couldn't tell how long he'd been holding the kneel anymore, but had decided to make the most of the time and engage his muscles, find a workout in the stillness of the position.

The bow of his head was making his neck sore, but he couldn't relax it. To have his head held high made it more difficult to keep his eyes from flicking to the emptiness of the open doorway, and so it remained bent, bowed, waiting.

The thing about staring downwards was how difficult it was to look at the floor. Sure, he'd followed the whorls and grain of the wood planks. Counted the nails in the boards, noted the dust motes hidden under the nearest leg of the bedframe. The problem was that floor wasn't half as interesting as his torso. He had a proper six-pack and could make it show. That the muscles threw little shadows—it wasn't unimpressive. The thing about looking down beyond his chest, and all those flexing muscles, following the dusting of black hairs to where they gathered into a line, thickening and spreading out like grains of sand in the bottom of an hourglass into the soft curls nesting around his cock, was that led to concentrating on his cock itself. Looking at it it made him think about it, made him think about what he was doing, kneeling on hardwood, naked, sore across the back and knees. Thinking those thoughts was enough to wake up his heavy prick from where it hung, dusky and half-erect.

And that would be fine if only he could do something about it. Give a few rough tugs of the foreskin down, roll it back up with a loose fist. Touch himself the way he liked, just to get going. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be _something._ He’d lost track of how many times he’d half-hardened and half-softened again, to the point that the thought of brushing the head up against the duvet was enough to bring a shiver to his spine. The _thought of it._

When Draco alighted on the staircase two floors down, he heard it. Each step he took closer, measured and steady, was picked up by Harry's ears. It was an anticipation that made his blood rush, faster, faster, faster.

"Oh, pet." Draco purred the words, stopping on the threshold of the room for a beat before entering. When he got close, even the sight of his bare feet was a balm to Harry's vision; when he stood before him and pulled him close so that Harry's heavy head could rest against his thigh, his touch sent a violent shiver down Harry's spine.

He smelled divine, and as Harry pressed his cheek to the soft twill of his trousers, he couldn't help but think that like this, when they were alone, Draco became something divine to him. A god, worthy of worship if only to be able to gaze upon his feet. It became a pleasure to give him what _he_ wanted—whatever that was.

"You've been very good this whole time, haven't you?" Draco asked. Harry nodded into his leg.

"I'd like to reward you for being so good. Let's start by getting you up on the bed. You can let your hands go," he said gently, and Harry released them from their clenching of one another and gave a little moan at how good that release was.

“Thank you,” he breathed. The quiet of his words matched that of the room.

"Here. Take my hand." Draco offered one to help him stand. There had to be magic at play, because it couldn't simply be blood rushing back to all the places it had been stymied from that made Harry feel so light. Heady and high, he gripped Draco's hand and kept his eyes down, stuck memorizing the space between Draco's fully clothed body and his naked one. His cock nudged against Draco's thigh, a thin dark line from where the drip of milky precome that had collected at the tip of his prick smudged.

Harry felt bad about that. Like he should have to lick it up or to clean it somehow. He thought about how next time, he'd be more careful.

The thought was a passing one. "Lay face down," Draco spoke simply, but it was a command all the same. Harry did as he was told, hot cheek pressed against the cool sheet. It felt _amazing_ to lie there while Draco's hands wandered along the hills and valleys of his back, thumbs drawing deep moans when they pressed and held into places of tension along his spine, and where his trapezoids connected with his neck.

Soon, the hands disappeared as Draco stood back from the bed. "Is there anything in specific that you'd like as a reward for your good behaviour?"

Harry had closed his eyes to keep from looking where he hadn't been told he could look, so his hearing took over, and he could picture each piece of clothing Draco divested himself of as he listened to the rustling of fabrics. The soft black jumper that generated static electricity as he tugged it over his head; it had a way of always making his fine hair stand on end. The way he tugged an arm into the t-shirt underneath and pulled it off in one motion with the other; the way his skin always goose-pimpled when it hit the air, his small pink nipples pebbling. The slide of the strap of his belt against the worn leather, and the thud as he shucked his trousers and underwear completely, followed by the step up of each foot as he stripped the socks from them.

The belt. He was wearing his belt today.

"Belt," Harry said.

"I'm sorry, pet," Draco's voice was gentle still, as soothing as his hands had been. "You'll have to be a bit more specific."

"I'd like your belt again, please. For you to tie me with it."

He licked dry lips and waited for a response, but all he got was the sound of Draco's long exhale, and then, finally, the feel of his hands, hot, uncurling one of Harry's closed fists so that his palm was exposed.

"Fuck, Harry," Draco whispered, "you haven't the faintest clue what you do to me, do you?"

Into the palm was dropped the watch, holding the warmth of Draco's skin inside its metal and glass face, and Harry clenched onto it. It was safety. Not that he felt that he needed it, but having something you didn't need was much better than being without something you did.

"I want to keep you like this," Draco said at last. "If I do that, I could tie your hands behind your back again, and that'll strain your shoulders. But, if I can do that, I promise that I'll make you come harder than you've ever come before. What do you say to that?"

"Yes, please, sir," Harry said, smiling into the abyss. He couldn't see it, but he knew that Draco was smiling at him too.

"Good boy," he said, "up on your knees again, like before."

There was an elegance to it, Harry thought. Having spent so much time lamenting being alone, alternately curling his toes or flattening his feet beneath him, infinitesimal movements to try to find the place where the pain was least because very little about kneeling and waiting was pleasurable. Now, knees sinking into the give of the mattress, Draco's hands placing his right wrist under his left and tying them in place; the faint wisps of his breath on Harry's bare shoulders, the touch of his fingers and the sturdiness of leather to strain against, making all the difference.

A flash of white; Draco's hands at the edge of his vision, taking his glasses from him, following up with the vision-correcting charm. Harry was so worried that he'd look up that he pressed his eyelids shut on a gasp, bringing a throaty laugh from Draco.

"You're almost _too_ good," he growled. "You do make me want to do the worst things with you." The woodsy notes from his hand cream were palpable; Harry would pay to be able to inhale at his wrists. Then, the press of his hand at the back of Harry's head.

"Bend," he said, and Harry bent in half, so easily. Cheek to sheets again, only this time his arms held tight, knuckles brushing the knob of at the base of his spine. Knees wide, leaving his arse fantastically exposed, his cock harder for being ignored, suspended in the space between his stomach above and the bed below.

"What do you call this pose?" Harry asked the question as Draco checked the knot of the belt, two fingers sliding between the leather and his wrists.

"I feel like a frog," he continued, to Draco's answering chuckle. Checking for enough space for circulation, like they'd been taught in Auror training.

Harry wondered how it was that Draco became trained in the art of stringing someone up.

"I'd call it helpless," Draco answered him at last, interrupting his thoughts, which were quickly going down the rabbit hole of wondering who'd been in Harry's position before, or put Draco in it, and it was so easy for him to succumb to senseless possessiveness when it came to those things.

Hilarious, to consider it. Him possessing Draco. And yet, what other face did jealousy most often wear?

"You look like the most scrumptious bit of arse I've ever had the pleasure of touching, and I want to fuck you until you can't speak."

Draco made a rather lewd wet sound with his mouth, and then pressed a wet fingertip to Harry's exposed arsehole, and Harry realized the realities of his position as he gasped, twin urges to push back and move away causing his arms to tense up against their restraints and his thighs to tighten, pushing his hips up and back. Draco traced a slow circle around the rim as the bed dipped once, twice. He was behind Harry, was about to do to him what he wanted, and Harry wasn't prepared.

"Take a deep breath, pet. I won't start without you," Draco said, removing the fingertip and Harry relaxed, remembered to suck in fresh oxygen.

"What do you say if you want me to stop?"

"Stop, please," Harry murmured. Draco hummed his pleasure.

"And this?" He tapped his fist. "What do you do with this?"

"If I want to stop, I drop it."

"Exactly. How much discomfort would you say your shoulders are in now? Out of ten?"

"Four," Harry said.

"So more like a six, then? Don't be shy—tell me the truth. I know the right one twinges."

"Four," he repeated. It was uncomfortable, yes, but not unbearable. Once you'd been put through _Crucio_ as many times as he had been, or cut, or fallen, or burned, the meaning of a pain scale changed. Yes, there was a strain in his right shoulder—a building pressure, like it might be liable to pop out if pressed. But he didn't want Draco to stop. Anything less than an eight he could pretend didn't exist, anyways.

"Tell me when you get to a seven. Understood?"

"Yes, sir." Harry gasped, needing touch again. "Please, won't you—"

"Open your eyes."

It was more of a struggle to complete this task than Harry would have understood was possible before he'd started playing these games with Draco. The light seemed like it had intensified since he'd closed them, though, in reality, Draco had dimmed the _Lumos_ charm in the room to a few floating balls of light, like candles. He'd provided a present for Harry in the form of the enormous gilt mirror that typically hung on the opposite wall. It floated maybe ten feet from the bed, reflecting them. Harry, mouth a wanton thing, pursed open, curls wild across his forehead and mussed from where Draco had played with it. He swore his eyes brightened when they fucked—the green its most vivid. He memorized the details of the scene because he was sure that life could never again be good like this.

The black of the leather belt so carefully folded and knotted around his wrists, the tendons and veins of his forearms and hands thick and ropey as he made fists that held every ounce of control he had left inside of him.

And Draco, a nymph, if nymphs had pricks. A satyr, then, born of snow, luminous, eerie in his beauty. Each part of him, something that Harry knew the smell and taste of—the liveliness of his fresh sweat; the musk of his bollocks in their nest of hair. The edge of bitterness to his come, and the sea salt of his tears.

That he had eyes only for Harry in the mirror; delighted in tracing his soft spaces to make the muscles jump, giggles exploding from his throat as he tried and failed to twist away from them; it seemed impossible to Harry that that was the look that, as far as he knew, Draco reserved especially for him.

_Because he loves you. He said so._

When Draco pulled his hips up to a height he liked and grabbed the olive skin of Harry's arse cheeks, separating them, diving in and shoving his tongue inside of him, he groaned before Harry did. He palmed his flesh and parted it, rimming him until his spit dripped down onto Harry's sac, pulling away on occasion to stare at the effects of his work and blow a stream of cool air to make his hole clench up, and then to meet Harry's eyes in the mirror.

Groaning, Harry had little to do but watch what he could, or close his eyes and ride out the sensations when he couldn't take the sight any longer. He wanted to taste Draco, somehow, but couldn't articulate his wants, and so concentrated on controlling the quivering of his thighs, and how good the feel of cotton weave rubbing on his nipples was. He hoped that Draco would fuck him before he started to beg.

Draco shoved back at last, lips thick and wet and pink, lust clear in every panted breath. He didn't say anything before he reared up and grabbed Harry by his left hip, right hand lining his cock up with Harry's entrance. He rubbed the head against that soft place, entranced. He liked to watch as he entered Harry, and Harry liked that he knew this about him.

Harry wished for the first time that he had use of his hands so that he could brace himself against the headboard, or touch himself, or touch _Draco_.

" _Fuck,_ " he said, going rigid as Draco pressed forwards just enough to push the head in, and then he stopped.

"How are your arms, pet?"

"Six," Harry huffed. The right shoulder would pop, eventually. There wasn't any point in pretending they didn't hurt.

"Relax," he answered, and Harry shifted, bringing his knees closer to his armpits, pressing his forehead into the mattress, which only served to give him a front-row view to his untouched cock.

"Harry," Draco breathed, pressing four fingers in a smooth motion from the base of his spine up, up to his middle back.

“What if I say please?” Harry might seem helpless, but he was perfectly capable of using brute strength to fuck himself on Draco’s prick if he had to. Needs must, after all.

“Not yet,” Draco bat him away with a smack to his side. He pressed the hand into his lower back to deepen the angle of his spine, and to remove the option of topping from the bottom from him. He pressed along the sides of the knobs of Harry’s spine once more, and raked the fingers back; repeated the motion, higher the next time. On the third journey, Harry went lax against the restraint, letting his chest collapse into the mattress on an exhale.

That was what it took for Draco to relent. "Good boy," he whispered, nudging inside, and then, because he knew he could take it, sliding all the way in.

Harry mewled like he lost his mind. It was undignified, but he was achingly hard, brought to a precipice and kept there, poised, ready to fall at any point but unable to go over by any action of his own. Draco repositioned his hands and pulled back, waiting. It burned a bit, and Harry knew that it would only be a minute before the muscles inside greeted the intrusion. Draco knew this too, and so was patient, holding still until the pressure on his cock loosened, and then he thrust in completely. It was like he pushed sound out of Harry, made him turn to press his cheek flat once more, though he couldn’t see anything for how his eyes were screwed shut.

“There we go,” Draco whispered as he repeated the motion, drawing out, watching all the while, and then back in with a grunt.

After a few more careful thrusts Draco fell into a steady rhythm and loosened his grip on Harry’s hips. He murmured something, and then his hands ran up Harry’s arms to a fresh strap connecting his biceps. Harry chanced a look in time to feel the conjured restraint tighten as Draco hoisted him up. This way, Harry was like a bow, his head resting on Draco's shoulder as he pistoned up into him below. 

His shoulders and arse were pressed to Draco’s chest and hips, his scarred arm clenched tightly around the centre of Harry’s torso. Draco held him close, his face hidden partially behind Harry's, his concentration going into whipping his hips at a faster, harder pace while keeping them balanced just so.

Harry was elated. His cock leaked precome, a long trail of it down the bed, and he could _feel_ when the head of Draco's prick dragged past his prostate. His back and arms were on fire, and he was past the point of no return, his orgasm so close he could fucking taste it, and Draco still hadn’t touched his prick. Not once.

“Please,” Harry managed the word and Draco stilled.

“Number?”

“Seven, but please, please, please make me come, please. I’ve been good.”

Harry knew he sounded broken. He quivered, head hung back to rest in the crook of Draco’s neck. It would be nothing to him to take Harry in hand and make him come so hard that he sprayed across the headboard. Fuck it, the wall.

Draco redoubled his grip on the bit of leather connecting Harry’s biceps and pulled him down as he pressed his prick up, into his body. The feeling of absolute fullness made him thrum and groan unabashedly.

“You’ll come like this,” he growled. “Just like this, pet.”

Draco started again, fast, and deep. The bed frame clapped against the wall, and the sound of their slapping skin filled the room.

"My cock—enough—for you?" Draco punctuated his words with thrusts, and Harry keened something like a response. His breaths came faster, shallower. Full, restrained, prick so hard that to be touched now would likely be painful. He was close, still, just from Draco's tongue at his entrance and his cock, long and thick, owning Harry from the inside out. He _could_ do this.

“That’s it,” Draco spoke into his skin, and then he was nibbling at Harry’s neck, kissing beneath his ear.

“I’m trying.” Harry’s voice wasn’t his own anymore—high and strained. It was an ill-timed thing to say because by the time he said it, a switch inside him flipped and his balls drew up tightly against his body. Draco whispered into his right ear, “I fucking love you, Harry, I love you like this, come for me, pet,” his voice shaking, and that’s when he came, mouth open in a silent howl. His body shivered as his arse gripped around Draco involuntarily.

“Fuck—Merlin— _Christ_ ,” Draco ground out, continuing to pump inside him. Harry sat back into his lap, wetly connected, and turned to give Draco his mouth, their teeth and tongues connecting. Draco was so deep inside him it was barely fucking anymore, more of a slow grind, and it was by his gasps into Harry's mouth that he could tell he was coming too, filling Harry up as his body was on its way down from the peak of his orgasm. Draco slowed his movements to an eventual stop, dragging in breaths once he was finished. At last, his damp forehead met the back of Harry's neck as he let his body sag from the taut position it had held.

"Fuck, Merlin, Christ is right," Harry said at last, and Draco hummed, then gave a breathy laugh, his cock jumping inside of Harry in time with the tensing of his stomach. He turned to look once more in the mirror as Draco pulled out of him, gently, holding him aloft by his armpits. Within a few seconds he muttered the incantation that vanished the conjured belt, and once he determined that Harry was sturdy on his knees, undid the one at his wrists and laid him, facedown on the clean side of the bed.

Harry eyelids closed, but only for a second before the lilac scent of Draco's _Scourgify_ hit scented the air. They'd moved from spells to damp flannels— _sex towels_ , as Draco put it—and the spell was a departure from that new tradition.

Harry raised a lazy eyebrow. "What's with the charm?" 

There was a wet spot to his right where he'd drooled into the sheets while getting the rimjob of the century, and the sheet had rucked up from around the mattress. If the bed was in a state, it had nothing on how thoroughly debauched both of them looked. Harry’s head was a messy halo of frizzy black, a constellation of lovebites purpling on his neck. Draco, as usual, seemed practically kempt as he rubbed life back into Harry's hands, forcing circulation of blood back into his skin.

Draco took a second too long to respond. "Just cleaning up," he answered, still out of breath. 

"Why not a flannel?" Harry closed his eyes again, submitting to the massage. Draco's hands made him go boneless.

" _Scourgify_ was the easier solution to destroy any evidence of our...thorough activities."

It took Harry a few seconds to process his words before their possible meaning came over him. This was the nightmare scenario he'd assumed all gay sex would be like when he'd started imagining it in his late teens. Sucking cocks—sure, he'd had a firm grip on how that would start, progress, and end. Fucking someone in the arse—the _how_ had been largely a mystery, and he'd never asked about prep. He'd assumed that the charms Draco taught him were foolproof and he'd never have to think about the matter directly again, and now _this_.

Draco poked at his triceps, stiffened along with every other major muscle in his body.

"Don't tense up—relax," he snapped.

"How can I relax? I'm fucking mortified." Harry reached blindly and located a pillow to smash his face into.

His reaction and clear and able use of his hands due to their firm grip on the pillow was enough to stop Draco from attempting further massage, his weight sinking in next to Harry's onto the bed. Soon, the pillow was tugged away, and Draco used it to prop up his head, lying tip to toe alongside Harry, facing up while he remained belly down.

"Don't be," he said simply.

Harry huffed so that it poofed up his fringe. "Well, I am, so..." The flush of embarrassment burned up his chest, and neck, and soon enough his cheeks heated with it. Draco brushed hair from his forehead, turning to face him, though Harry wouldn't return his gaze.

"Pet, honestly. Perhaps you play some game where you pretend that we have magical holes that are just for sex, and other ones for our bodies primary physical needs, but I don't. I like men, and I like fucking men, and I, for one, find no reason to divorce what our arses usually do from what I like to do with them. It's truly not a big deal."

"Maybe not for you," Harry mumbled. Draco's hand didn't stop petting his hair, pushing an extra-long piece behind his ear. Harry cracked an eye and was displeased to find the look Draco was giving him was, of all things, _fond_.

"Just be thankful it's me here for the first time and not some condescending top conning you into buying him new sheets, and yes, that's a true story."

Harry managed a half-smile but remained dutifully mad about it. He wanted to sulk, not to have a laugh.

"Honestly." Draco ran his knuckles over Harry's sort-of-smiling cheek. “It’s stupid that I think you’re hot when you’re sulking.”

Harry batted his hand away, but it came right back. Draco’s movements were languid and gentle, the way he always got after sex. It was...nice.

"No amount of charms or prep is ever one hundred per cent effective, and our bodies are living organisms. Everything to do with sex is filthy—“

Harry opened his mouth to object, but Draco got there first, 

“—because our society has set it up to be so. We don't talk about sex, and the fact of the matter is that if you're doing it right, eventually someone will get come in their eye, just as readily as someone getting shit on their dick, and if that makes you squirmy, you’re not ready to play with the adults yet."

"I can't believe you're saying these words," Harry whispered, in awe. Draco Malfoy had the poshest mouth he'd ever known, and here he was, naked, covered in Harry's sweat, saying things that even in the privacy of his own home made Harry blush to think of. It was unreal.

Draco shrugged, pleased with himself, and flopped onto his back.

"It's the truth! In my mind, if everything about sex is disgusting, then nothing is. It's all natural. And I want all of it, I want it desperately."

“Even the come in the eye?”

“I could do without that part, but those were learning experiences.” He looked away when he added, "If you wanted to, you know—explore, you could do that, too. Conduct your own experiments."

That perked Harry's ears right up. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"I only mean to say that I've had my chances to fool around and figure out what I like and don’t so much, and I don't want to deny you that same experience."

"I don't want to—it would feel like cheating." Harry's heart and stomach swapped places at the thought. He loved Draco, and Draco loved him. It was simple—they were together, them, and anyone else entering the picture was an intruder on their lives. Other people were threats—simple.

Draco shrugged, collarbones rising and falling.

"It wouldn't be cheating if I didn't see it that way. Not if I gave my permission. Monogamy is often the bedfellow of heteronormativity; since we're not much interested in one, why stay so attached to the other?"

"I, I don't—" Harry gulped. He'd never considered other options. What were they, even? Who'd written the book, and why hadn't he been given a peek to see how things went in the world?

Draco sat up to fluff his pillow, resting heavily back onto it, the deep blue of his nails in stark contrast with the white of his hands. Harry stared at them—he had such lovely hands. Pretty even—if they weren't as wide as a vinyl record when stretched, they'd pass for a girl's.

"Within rules and reason, you know?"

Harry’s eyebrows pulled further down in the centre, a frown forming more from confusion than hurt, or anger. "Do you want to sleep with other people?"

It was a testament to how much time they'd spent together that Draco didn't scoff or make a joke. He lay in silence, thinking loudly as he stared up at the ceiling. Eventually, he tilted to face Harry, one hand landing warmly at his waist.

"Right now, at this point in my life? No, not all at all. I want you, Harry. All of you. But I want you to know that we have the freedom to make up our own rules, and we don't have to answer to anybody. And what we do, how we structure our relationship, that's up to us. Does that make sense?"

Harry nodded, though his stomach was still clenched tight. Options felt like doorways to abandonment, but he knew the feeling was misplaced. 

"I mean what I say. You and me, we're solid. You're home, to me. I'll always come home, the same way I know you will."

"But homes are places where you can invite guests," Harry added, slowly. Draco was about to say something when his cell phone buzzed, rattling on the side table.

He reached over with a long arm and flipped it open, clicking in a response.

"Good news?"

"I guess so. You should tell the Weasley's to draw up another chair." He wiggled his brows mischievously. "A Malfoy is coming for dinner."

Excitement and worry surged in Harry's chest, so that he sat up, wide-eyed. "Oh. My god. Tomorrow?"

"Keep your pants on. Next week, Sunday. Alanna finally accepted my extensive grovelling and agreed to cover for me."

The surprise must have been obvious on Harry's face as Draco gave him an arch look.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"It's not _nothing_ , with that look. Did you think I was avoiding this dinner?" Harry shrugged, garnering him a melodramatic gasp for the ages. "You absolute _twat_. I've been _begging_ for someone to cover for me on Sundays, and I couldn't trade to cover for anyone else, you bloody well know what my schedule is like—"

Harry grabbed at his hands, coming in to poke and prod because now Draco was annoyed with him.

"I didn't think you were avoiding it. More, just, putting it off indefinitely?"

Now was Draco's time to scoff, sitting up and wrestling with him until Harry let himself be pinned down to the foot of the bed. Any more tussling and there would be bruised egos, one way or another.

"I'll have you know," Draco panted, "that I left cowardice in the last century. I'll see you for fucking dinner at the Burrow, next Sunday, and you had better be ready for the performance of a lifetime. By the end of it, there won't be a Weasley that doesn't like me."

"They'll love you," Harry said, breaking Draco's grip on his wrists and curling up to surprise him with a kiss on the lips. Draco held his face, and he didn't mind the chance to show off the strength of his torso if it meant being kept within kissing distance. "It's impossible not to."

* * *

**Sunday, March 7, 2004**

To say the waiting was painful would be an understatement of perhaps epic proportions. Mr Weasley pretended to suddenly find things of great interest in the entranceway, cooing over a framed picture of Charlie or Ginny, an excuse to hover in the area. He patted a hand at Mrs Weasley's shoulder whenever she passed, turning weary circles from front door to kitchen to dining room, back again.

Harry sat on the stair and read his book, the only person in the house not pretending not to be waiting on Draco’s arrival. He dug out his mobile as it neared the appointed time, and stuck the bit of receipt he used as a bookmark into the paperback, lowering it to observe the Weasley patriarch through the spindles of the staircase. He wore glasses now and they lent him a sterner air than he'd ever had back when Harry was a teenager. Harry did not envy Draco his now fifteen-minutes-late entrance to the festivities one bit.

Mrs Weasley kept breaking into a nervous smile when others looked at her. She meandered into view and caught Harry watching her do it for the nth time. He wiggled his fingers in a mock wave as her features settled into a slight frown. She'd been alternately wringing her apron or smoothing flyaway greys escaping her bun all evening. He watched, amused if not a bit sore in the stomach as she did both before walking briskly from the room with an exclamation of "The potatoes!".

Right. It was maybe, surely, totally about to all go to shit.

When Draco’s characteristic triple knock came at the door, Harry's stomach dropped, even as he forced himself to hold his composure. He sprung up from the staircase, startling Ginny's ancient crup Arnold, and placed his book with care on the bottom stair, exactly where he and Ron were always told not to leave their things.

Opening the door provided a hit of the sharp, clean cold of outside air, and the stark beauty of Draco in colour. The sky-blue scarf wrapped tightly around his neck set off his eyes, lighter than Harry had ever seen them. The way that the pink at the tip of his nose matched the colour of his lips told Harry that though he'd Apparated to the house, he'd likely been pacing outdoors for some time.

"Hello, gorgeous," he said effusively. "Come in, come in. It's bloody freezing out there."

Draco nodded, placing a quick hand at his chest and a frozen peck to Harry's cheek as he stepped inside, spelling the bit of snow collected on his boots away.

"Let me take your jacket," Harry said, not surprised in the least by Draco's silence. By the heavy cadence of the footfalls behind him and knew that Mrs Weasley had rejoined her husband in the narrow space. A hush seemed to fall where moments ago the sounds of a packed house could be heard from every direction.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Draco said, to no one in particular. "Some of the older kids have issues with authority, so I wanted to provide Alanna with an introduction, and the time got away from me."

"It's going to be fine," he whispered into Draco's ear as he leaned in to unwind the scarf from his neck. Draco managed a tiny, tight smile, his eyes darting over Harry's shoulder. He swallowed and the smile widened, though he looked sick from fright to do it.

"Hullo, Mr and Mrs Weasley.” Draco was politeness incarnate, and if Harry didn’t know him better, he’d be sure that he was trying extra hard not to sound like the poshest swot ever born and bred on an estate replete with peacocks. “Happy belated, Mr Weasley.”

They both stood staring, Mrs Weasley's hands clasped tightly together, but no warm words of welcome came from her. Harry turned to watch the couple watching Draco, and felt not unlike a tennis match was about to begin. He opened his mouth to intervene in some way, but Draco held up a hand to silence him.

"Harry, I'm sure you have lovely things to say, but I'd be remiss if I didn't take this chance. You'll have to excuse me and let me say my bit," Draco said. He took a deep breath and looked directly at the Weasley heads of household.

"Firstly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your hospitality. I can't express how thankful I am that you've welcomed me into your home. It means the world to me to be able to spend time with Harry's family, so, thank you. It shows goodness in you that I couldn't possibly begin to repay."

Draco paused to lick his lips, his eyes darting further down the hall. Harry stood like a statue at the foot of the stairs, hands full of Draco’s things and was both glad to be close to Draco for this, as well as aware that he was awkwardly close to a conversation that wasn't his to have. His eyes followed Draco’s to take note of the additional heads of flaming red hair that had appeared from a variety of doorways. Ron and Charlie joined from the kitchen while Fleur, Ginny, and Angelina were gathered at the top of the stair.

"Secondly," Draco continued, locking eyes with Mrs Weasley, who was clutching at her chest and by god Harry would eat his shoe if she made it through this without bursting into tears, "I have to apologize for my frankly abhorrent conduct."

"You were young," Mr Weasley offered.

"Youth is no excuse," Draco countered. He was calm, steadfast. Harry wondered how many times he'd done this before. "It's only as an adult that I've been anything other than a—well, I won't say the words I would normally use here, Mrs Weasley, but let's go with chopped flobberworms for the sake of it—" Harry could make out the sound of Ginny snorting from upstairs, "—but I understand that I am the same person. It's strange, Harry and I use the word ‘meet’ when we talk about how we got started last year, and it's the wrong word for it, but I've grown to like it. When I'm exceptionally lucky these days, I get a second chance at meeting people. That's what this feels like. A second chance at meeting you."

Draco swallowed nervously. A floorboard creaked down the hall, but he didn't waver, never taking his eyes off of the pair before him.

"What makes me a different person now are the choices I make, and I endeavour them to be good ones. Harry," Draco said, turning to face him with clear eyes, "would you pass me the bag in the breast-pocket of my coat? Thank you," he added as Harry passed him a rough-hewn bag the size of his palm, the kind he used to parcel up tinctures and potions for delivery.

"Lastly, Harry would have called me a knob for doing this if he'd known at the time, and he'd have been right to," Draco turned to look at him again and Harry grinned, heart swelling in his chest. Draco finally cracked a nervous smile before looking to the little bag in his hands and tugging it open, pulling a cylindrical bottle of brown glass from it.

"I couldn't help but look it up in a book, what the appropriate gift was to bring to the surrogate parents of your partner when it's also the first time they're having you in their home, and it's sort of a birthday gift, and you're trying to apologize for seventeen years bad behaviour." Mrs Weasley made a strange choking sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob and Ron could be heard at the end of the hall, his, "Oh, don't start _now_ Mum, the sun's hardly even set," which drew laughs from Charlie and at least a few others who were out of sight. Mrs Weasley tried to dab at her eyes casually, as though she wasn't crying at all. Mr Weasley squeezed tightly at her shoulder, and Harry would be damned if the old man wasn't getting misty-eyed behind the lenses of his glasses.

"Unfortunately for me there isn't some symbolic flower that would do the trick, and I wasn't lucky in finding any definitive answers," Draco frowned at the bottle in his hands before stepping forward and presenting it to Mrs Weasley, lowering his eyes to meet hers. "Long story short, I had to improvise. Harry told me that mead is a favourite at family dinners, so I brought you a variety I've been working on. The base is honey, and it’s got a hint of orange blossom. Though I don't drink it myself, I do enjoy brewing it, and I'm told my brews aren't half-bad."

"You're doing yourself a disservice, Draco," Hermione called from down the hall, "I've seen firsthand what that mead can do, it will be the end of us! A pint each or we'll all wake up Splinched in the morning."

"You can be such a spoil-sport," Ron cajoled. 

"Don't go scaring them off so early, Granger," Draco called back down to her, turning back to Mrs Weasley with a tight smile. "Don't believe a word she says. I've seen a drop of elf-wine down her with my own two eyes. This bottle's got a heavy Refilling Charm on it, courtesy of our Harry. If it doesn't suit you, it'll last you a lifetime. If you like it, I promise to bring another round next year."

 _Our Harry_ , Harry thought, turning the words over in his mind. _Next year._ He loved these casual acts of ownership, of feeling that he was Draco's, just as he was a part of this family that had taken him in all those years ago. He felt fit to bursting with a mixture of pride and love so deep it hurt.

Mrs Weasley took the bottle with slightly shaking hands, studying it. Mr Weasley gave a curt nod of approval, chin jutting up to save himself from going as misty-eyed as his wide.

"That's a lovely gift, young man. It's our pleasure to have you," Mr Weasley said cordially.

Mrs Weasley placed the bottle on the sideboard. A great silence fell as she appraised Draco.

"Would you look at you," she said, closing the distance between them and pulling Draco into a sudden hug. "Skin and bones, the lot of you boys! You're worse than Harry's ever been!"

Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing at how gently Draco placed his hands at her back, stooping to make the angle less awkward.

Andromeda piped up from where she leaned against the wall down the hall, wearing a smirk that Harry recognized as an inheritable Black family trait.

"I agree, but I think the lad is looking a bit of alright now, Molly."

"You as well, Aunt Andromeda," Draco answered her over Mrs Weasley's shoulder. "This hair suits you."

Andromeda rolled her eyes, though she also touched the ends of her newly bob-cut strands of hair, clearly not all displeased with receiving a compliment from her nephew. Mrs Weasley drew away, face shining, and bustled immediately out of the hall, waving her hands at the assembly of children, grand-children and spouses watching her. "Shoo now, all of you! Isn't anyone watching the hob?"

Tension broken, people laughed and began to filter back out into separate rooms. The scratch of the phonograph started up, and Harry let out a sigh of relief that this meeting was going to go just fine.

"Now, we were just about to set up let the little ones with some games to keep them occupied till we're ready to sit, so I'm going to collect them all for that in the lounge," said Mr Weasley. "There's hot spiced cider in the kitchen. We've kept George away from it, so it won't have any alcohol in. Harry said you don't go for that—smart man." He winked, and Draco smiled demurely.

"Give Molly a minute to compose herself and she'll have you a mug in no time. And watch out on your first round of food—there will be seconds, judging by the look of you, and that won't be up for debate."

"There'll be thirds," Harry said, unable to wipe the grin from his face. He took Draco's hand firmly in his and pulled him towards the closet across the hall. "But don't worry about that. Let me get your stuff away and we can grab a couple of mugs, do the tour?"

Draco nodded and followed quietly, biting his lip. As Harry finished hanging his things, he could feel Draco's breath hot against his ear.

"I did alright, yes?" Draco whispered to him.

"Yes," Harry turned to rest his face against Draco's a moment, feeling his eyelashes flutter closed against his cheek, "you did wonderfully."

* * *

The evening meal arrived not a moment too soon. Harry took Draco firmly by the hand and led him into the as-per-usual magically elongated dining room, the table hosting as many place settings and mish-mashed seats as it had during the days just after the war, when Harry, Hermione and Ron had all called it home, along with a rotating cast of friends and family.

The seating arrangement was an alteration of what it was every week, with Mr Weasley sat at the head of the table nearest the kitchen, so that it was his job to levitate in forgotten odds and ends. Mrs Weasley took up the far end, keeping her from standing at every opportunity and dashing away to grab this or that thing that she deemed necessary for one of the guests. Once she was sat and a glass of wine poured, it was a rule that she wasn't allowed to stand again unless it was to nip away to the loo.

To the right were most of the Weasley children and their beaus, starting with Charlie, who was visiting for the week, moving along with Angelina and George, through to Hermione and Ron, and rounding out with Ginny and Neville. Neville, being left-handed, had to be sat at the corner edge of the table, though the others sometimes swapped spots, largely based on whether someone was in a tiff with someone else or not.

On the left were friends and guests. Harry had once held Neville's spot, and it had been a bit of awkwardness to be catapulted to the other side of the table after he and Ginny broke up. First came neighbours and frequent guests, Mr and Mrs Rajani, sidled up next to Mr Weasley. Next was Harry, then Draco, who was sandwiched on the other side by a radiantly happy Teddy, hair as pink as a wad of freshly chewed bubblegum. Andromeda was next, and the last seat was empty, though often filled by a late-comer or a friend of Mrs Weasley's.

Draco was kept busy fielding questions from Teddy as Harry spelled food onto both of their plates. When Teddy's attention was pulled away briefly by Andromeda's rule about "No thank you helpings", whereby he had to try a bite of something before he refused a portion, Draco took a look to his plate, with its hill of creamy mashed potatoes and gravy, cut of roast beef, steamed vegetables, dressed salad and a buttered white dinner roll. He turned to Harry with an infinitesimal widening of his eyes that clearly indicated the panic that was ensuing inside him.

 _You relax, for once,_ Harry thought, sure that they'd be audible to Draco and Draco alone. _I'll vanish most of what you don't eat when Mrs Weasley isn't looking. It's a trick as old as time at this table._

 _Thank you_ , Draco whispered into his mind, and Harry found his knee under the table and gave it a single, bracing squeeze before digging in. He'd be fine—everything would be just fine. Why wouldn't it be?

"Draco?" Teddy asked, for what was easily the twentieth time in under ten minutes.

"Yes?" Draco speared a bit of rocket and cherry tomato and paused, tines facing down and hovering just off his plate.

"What's the matter with your hand?"

The pitter-patter of conversation dried up all at once, making it all the more obvious when Andromeda lowered her cup and took a bracing breath.

"Edward, what have we learned about asking people intrusive questions?"

"It's alright," Draco offered the hint of a smile, "I don't mind."

As Teddy turned away from his grandmother and stared into Draco's face, many other heads swivelled, suddenly rapt. Draco spoke to Teddy only, even though in the quiet, it was clear that everyone was now listening.

"Well, Tedward—"

"It's not _Tedward_ —"

Draco took a breath. "Fine then, Teddifer—"

"When will you—"

"Teddy then, can we settle on Teddy?" With a healthy dose of nodding, Draco continued, "Well, Teddy, what happened to my hand was an accident. I was messing about with potions that I oughtn't to have been, and I got hurt. But it's alright now."

"What kind of potions?"

"Dangerous ones. So this is a good lesson, that when someone tells you not to play with something because it's dangerous, you should listen to them."

Teddy chewed a chunk of carrot thoughtfully before asking, mouth full of orange mush, "Did you get in a lot of trouble?"

"Teddy," Andromeda admonished, a furrow gathering her brow. Draco shook his head at her, quietly saying, "No, it's fine, really."

He laid down his cutlery, knowing then that he'd likely be answering questions for a while, and he, unlike Teddy, had the wherewithal and impeccable table manners to keep from speaking whilst his mouth was full.

"No, I didn't get in trouble. But I did go to a place that taught me how to avoid doing something so silly again. And when that worked, I decided that I'd like to learn how to work with potions safely, so I went to school for it."

The word _school_ was fresh enough to Teddy that he perked up at it. Pre-school was, quite literally, still all fun and games to him.

"Where's that?" The question came from down the line, Charlie's head poked forwards so that he was visible when Harry leaned forwards as well.

"Um, not necessarily anywhere anyone at this table would know. I went to a Muggle school—Imperial College, in London."

Harry couldn't contain his grin when various bits of crockery clattered as knives and forks dropped to them. He was impressed that though Mr Weasley dribbled a sip of water down his front, he managed to quite handily clean it with a quick charm before anyone else noticed.

"Wait, excuse me, _what?_ How did I not know this?" Ginny asked Harry, but didn't wait for him to actually reply, a common format of asking questions at the Weasley table. "What did you study?" 

"Chemistry." He turned to Teddy and added, "It's like Muggle potions," as though only for the little one's benefit.

"Sorry, could we round back to the part before this whole college bit?" This was George, voice falsely bright and level. His grip on his pint glass shook from the pressure. It had been emptied and filled numerous times already, though never once yet with Draco's proffered mead. "Where were you then?"

Draco took a sip of water, buying time to collect himself. Here he was, giving truths to acquaintances, some of them strangers, that he rarely shared with those who knew him best.

 _But now, they're family_ , Harry thought, struck by what kind of buy-in this showed on Draco's part.

"I was a resident at a rehabilitation centre—also Muggle-run—in Surrey. I was there for three months, give or take."

"So the stories in the papers are true," George sneered.

"You'd be careful not to believe everything the Prophet prints," Harry said. His tone didn't broach conversation, but he knew it was better to be careful than to set off a fight, so he focused back on his plate, forcing down a bite of roast rather than continuing on. George's smug demeanour rankled Harry, and for a second he felt Draco's fingers brush his under the cover of the tabletop. His way of saying _Don't_ , and it was enough to get him to lean back and take a breath. This wasn't his battle to fight.

"In this instance," Draco said, "Largely, yes. They are. I haven't denied the stories of my behaviour directly following the postwar trials in the press, and I won't here, either."

"Seems a bit odd, to go out and party. Like you were celebrating something."

"I can assure you, nobody was having much in the way of fun during that time, least of all me. Not to belittle anyone else's experience, but," he paused, silent as he carefully chose his words. "I was looking for a way out, but instead, I found a way back. To a world that was good, and kind, and had always existed. I just hadn't had the skills to see it that way, before."

A silence fell, one that Draco endured remarkably well. He managed a few more bites of salad, until Mr Weasley cleared his throat, rubbing his chin.

"How did that work?" Mr Weasley asked, seeming genuinely curious as he cut into a bit of roast. "Schooling? It's not often that purebloods manage to integrate into Muggle society in any way that could be considered seamless."

Draco smiled at his food. "I wouldn't call my integration seamless, not by a long shot, Mr Weasley. I had a decent cover story going into the centre in Surrey, of having grown up in a cult, which helped to explain my absolute ignorance of the most basic facets of Muggle life. More importantly, I had a deep willingness to learn. I was ashamed of how narrow-minded I'd been and took the opportunity at a second chance. I knew it was a rare thing."

"Must have been popular, you," George cut back in. "Did they know what your family did to their kind during the war?"

Angelina shushed him, halfheartedly. Harry's blood pumped at an increasing tempo, worry settling like a weight inside of him.

 _You've got this_ , he thought, _you can do this. We'll make them see you, the real you, the whole you._

Draco folded his hands in his lap, turned to face George with a slight incline of his head. Harry had eyes only for him—this wasn't easy for him, though to watch and listen to him speak to levelly, one would never know it.

"You're right—I wasn't popular at all in the beginning. I was edgy and rude, and quite frustrated with my lack of ability, and very few people thought very highly of me. _I_ didn't think very highly of me. Part of my cover story went into radicalization by my family, which wasn't far from the truth. Some of the residents called me 'Hitler Youth', which if you're unfamiliar with the term, is basically the Muggle version of Baby Death Eater, so no, I wasn't popular, not at all."

"In the beginning," Harry said the words before really thinking them. Draco turned to face him, and Harry gave what he hoped was a smile to shore him up. The air surrounding them smelled warm and spicy, the orange oil and musk that Harry associated with Draco intensifying as his warming body released the scent more readily. He was flushed, but thankfully that was all.

"In the beginning. By the end of things, I managed a few friendships which proved invaluable after I left. You can read all about it, actually," he tore his eyes away from Harry's and over to Hermione, anticipating her interest. "A psychologist took interest in my case and documented my time there as part of a study on de-radicalizing youth. It's printed in a Muggle scientific journal, and I’m given a cover name to anonymize it, but you can pick me out if you know what you're looking for."

"That's so interesting," Hermione breathed. "Wasn't I just telling you last week that the Ministry should have started up a program by now? We're starting to see some of the same indoctrination among magical youth here as they've been tracking in America for years. Not just purebloods with blood purity nonsense, but people who fought against those ideals who come to believe in a different version of it—that certain family lines should be exterminated—"

"Not to mention the registries," added Draco. Angelina and Hermione both sighed loudly at the remark.

"Don't get me started on those," Angelina pulled the elastic from her high bun, letting her braids fall past her shoulders. "Did you see that latest one, with the trolls?"

Hermione scoffed, "Nonsense!"

A variety of noises of agreement were made, and it was just as Draco managed a single demure bite of potatoes that Hermione squinted at him, pointing to get his attention.

"Isn't it a bit dangerous to have spoken to scientists about the Death Eaters, and have it documented? Even if it's in terms Muggles don't know the full extent of, how did you...?"

She trailed off, not sure how to finish the question. The table quietened again, and this time Draco answered while keeping his gaze firmly planted on the plate before him, where he'd cut his roast into so many bite-sized pieces, though was yet to touch any of them.

"On the one hand, I have thought about how it would be viewed as a special sort of treason to certain members of my extended family. It must _at least_ double the chance that I'll be first on the list of people to find and punish should there be a mass breakout from Azkaban," he said lightly. "Lucky for me, it's scientific Muggle literature. I find it quite unlikely that anyone of that group will figure out how to Google anything this century, so I think I'll be alright."

"Mass breakout would be more like a family reunion," George muttered. Charlie sucked his teeth at him as Mrs Weasley gave him a frown that couldn't be argued with. "Excuse me," he said gruffly, not offering a further explanation as he stood and left the room. A quiet descended at the table, broken only by the Rajani's asking for help in levitating over more rolls until Ron spoke up.

"Just because George is gone doesn't mean the grilling is over, I'm afraid," he said. Draco gave a pithy shrug of his shoulders, taking a sip of ice water. "If I'm rude, I blame the mead, which is bloody—"

"Language," Mr Weasley said wearily.

“Bad word, bad word,” Teddy giggled from his seat.

"—good. My birthday party is coming up in a few days, just so you're aware," he added.

"That mead takes over a month to brew properly, so you should be glad I’m a prodigious long-term planner.” He gave a haughty raised brow, one that Ron only chuckled at. “Now out with it, you."

"This dancing thing. You a student, or teacher there, or what? This one," Ron pointed with a fork still full of steaming mashed potatoes in Harry's direction, "was staking out the spot when you two weren't talking for that bit—"

"Oh, I'm well aware," Draco drawled, masterfully keeping from showing how the airing of their recent dirty laundry definitely freaked him out. He drew snickers from the opposite side of the table as Harry sunk into his chair, a burning flush erupting up his neck. "I can good as see straight through that Invisibility Cloak."

"Good. I'm trying to figure out what it is you're doing there."

"Would it surprise you terribly to learn that the answer is dancing?" Draco answered, drily enough that Ginny audibly snorted at the response.

"It's quite a good story, actually, how I ended up there," Draco started, looking around to realize that the entire table remained quite rapt. "This was about four years ago. I was newly enrolled in school, sober, just moved to Muggle London. Green as a pea shoot, I hadn’t a clue what to do with my time, and I needed something to do to use up a lot of energy, especially at night, to stay out of trouble. I took up running outdoors but _Impervious_ is too obvious, and it was raining terribly that year, so I figured a twenty-four-hour gymnasium would be ideal. I looked them up in a directory and made my way over one at night. Lo and behold, I find that the gymnasium has since turned into a dance studio, and it is decidedly _not_ open for business overnight, though some of the lights were on. The reason being that some youths had broken in—“

Harry snorted into his glass. “Youths? What were you, eighteen?”

”Yes, Harry, they were not yet of age and therefore would be classified as _youths_. They were doing as they do in the front room. Spin the Bottle with a side of carving initials into walls, et cetera. I was cranky, and it was probably about half-three in the morning, so I cast a little _Vermillious_ —"

"What's a, a—" Teddy asked, his stage whisper excruciatingly loud.

Harry leant forwards and answered loudly behind a cupped hand, "It's setting off a whole bunch of red sparks with your wand. We'll teach you when you're older."

Teddy nodded affirmatively and went back to gnashing carrots and staring at Draco intently, and Draco forgot himself for a moment and took Harry's hand in his, caressing his thumb as he smiled with his bottom lip sucked in.

"Exactly right. Anyways, they ran like crups from rain getting out of there, and I lock up for the sake of it and was about to leave myself when the proprietor shows up. Tiny woman, star ballerina in her day in Ukraine so you know she’s hard as absolute nails. She's been watching all of this from across the street, and I thought I'd have to _Obliviate_ her right there and then, but then she tells me that she knows all about magic—her sister is a witch, and she's been having trouble with these hooligans most nights, neighbourhood kids breaking into the studios on weekends, graffiti in the hallways, that sort of thing. She didn’t have the dosh for a security company, though, and it was driving her spare. So she and I cut a deal, where I got free reign after hours so long as I kept Notice-Me-Not charms fresh on the place overnights."

"You've never told me any of this," Harry said. Draco shrugged.

"You never asked," he said. “Is that adequate, Junior Auror Weasley?”

Ron nodded along. The mead was loosening everyone up—Andromeda and Mrs Weasley were engaged in a conversation down the other end of the table, and Hermione tried to be subtle while checking in on Angelina's well-being, considering her husband's early departure from the table. Harry worried that he’d been gone so long—it was unusual, even for him at his lowest to abandon mealtime like this.

Ron was kind enough to swallow the roll he’d eaten practically whole before following up. "So how'd you land the teaching gig?"

"You clearly haven't seen me dance," Draco quipped. "We called it an energy exchange—I worked night guard duty, and in exchange, I could take as many classes as I liked. I did it for a year, and when she had an opening for new teachers, I applied."

"What kind?" Neville piped up. Draco seemed startled to receive a question from the other end of the table.

"Ballet, mostly."

"I always wanted to learn ballet," he said thoughtfully. Hermione and Ginny bit back laughs, but Harry just grinned. Neville was almost too sweet for the world, this enormous lumberjack of a man, wistful about a form of dance so elegant, it was a laugh to think of him going anywhere near it. A slow, wide smile bloomed on Draco's face.

"It's not too late, you know. The barre is always waiting for new pupils."

"Could we enrol him in your class, then?" Ginny asked as Neville made a face and stole a brussel sprout from her plate in retaliation.

"I'm afraid not. I only teach one class now, Sunday evenings, and it's for folks a bit more wee than you, Longbottom."

"Am I wee enough?" asked Teddy. Draco turned his attention back to him and nodded.

"You're exactly wee enough, Tedson—"

"It's _Teddy!_ "

Draco smacked a palm against his forehead and collapsed back into his chair. "You're so right, _Teddy_. How is that so difficult for me to remember?"

Harry couldn't help but notice the pleased looks from around the table at Draco and Teddy's banter. 

"How much would this run us if Edward were to sign up?” Andromeda asked. “Classes in Camden can't come cheap, I gather."

Draco tipped his head, nodding in agreement. "Generally, you'd be correct. The school is well respected, and it costs accordingly. But the class I teach is by donation." He turned to the head of the table. "Mr Weasley, you'll have to forgive me—that's why it's taken so long for me to get a Sunday night off. My slot isn't exactly lucrative, so I had to wait for a very kind soul to volunteer to cover for me." He narrowed his eyes at Harry, "I wouldn't want anyone to think I was trying to avoid joining you all for dinner."

"What do you mean, 'by donation'?" Andromeda asked, vaguely incredulous. The mead had gotten to her too, as she stared into its depths in the goblet clutched in her hands.

"It is what it is. My contract with Jacqueline—she's the owner—it's always been a little iffy when it came to legality. Parents pay what they can when they're able. I've always thought of it as a little walking around money, you know?" He shrugged it off, though Harry and others at the table were clearly shocked at this newly unearthed tidbit.

"That's very...altruistic of you," Mrs Weasley spoke slowly from down the table, where Harry was surprised she was still listening in on their conversation. It was Draco's turn to blush the adorable high pink he sometimes went.

"No, not at all," he said, a little smile on his face. "The class keeps the local kids busy and invested in the space. Teaching them during the day kept them from coming around and interrupting my late-night sessions. Don't go thinking I'm soft—I do it for purely selfish reasons."

"Sure you do," Harry muttered through a grin, polishing off his first plate of food. 

* * *

After dinner the brandy was out, as well as a lemon meringue layer cake and three types of biscuits, herbal and black tea. It was with many yawns that the guests gradually donned their winter woollens and departed. Eventually, Harry and Draco were left on a loveseat, Hermione and Ron on the floor nearby, working on a thousand-piece puzzle featuring more flying quidditch players with Neville and Ginny absorbed in their phones when Andromeda bustled Teddy in for his goodbye's.

"Ask Draco what you asked me," she said, giving him a little push of the shoulder so that he would totter over to their couch.

"Grandma said I could go to your class if I promise to be good and at...at..."

"Attentive," she whispered.

"Tentive," he added.

Draco beamed. "I'd love to have you. Wear stretchy clothes that you can run around and play in, yeah? And a good pair of indoor trainers. Class starts at half-five and runs for a full hour. Normally I'm there afterwards for an extra half-hour for pick-up too," he added for Andromeda's benefit.

"I've been meaning to ask," Harry blurted out, "if Teddy could stay with us some weekends? One Saturday a month, or more, whatever works for you. We could bring him here after class," he looked between Draco and Andromeda, knowing this was a surprise to them both. He fixed his collar, Teddy busy smashing the figurine of a Chinese Fireball into Harry’s knee as he smoothed his hair down. “I meant to ask ages ago, but—er. Life got in the way.”

Andromeda nodded thoughtfully, eyeing Draco as she did it. "I think that would be lovely to give a go. I wouldn't mind a little more time to converse with adults," she said. "Before I forget, Molly mentioned that we can push mealtime back by an hour to accommodate your schedule, young man. We always do end up eating at seven anyway, and this way there will be no need for grovelling or excuses.”

“I’ll be sure to thank her,” Draco said. He turned his hesitant smile on Harry and it broke his heart how happy he could tell he was about it.

”I'll be in touch about a trial overnight with young Edward. Say your goodbyes, Edward."

"Goodbye!" he yelled, “Goodbye, goodbye,” running immediately from the room.

"Goodbye, then," Andromeda added, fond exasperation in her tone as she summoned his mittens from where they'd been strewn about the room.

Harry rubbed one of Draco's socked feet, sharing a warm look with him. Everything seemed easy and right, and he was about to open his mouth and start making their farewells when Charlie stomped into the room, letting out a deep huff.

"I don't know what we're going to do with that brother of ours, but he's right out of line."

Ron rolled over from his stomach onto his side and frowned at him. "Who—George? What's he done now?"

Charlie flicked a look over to Draco and Harry, and then back to Ron. "First, he's half-cut on Dad's stock of rye. Second, Andromeda and Ted are leaving, and he asks him if he's excited for dance class and when he says yes, he tells him to be careful because it's for ponce's and he should stick to quidditch instead."

Hermione gasped, sharing a look immediately with Ron and Harry.

"He did not," Ginny growled, sitting up. "The little—" she looked around the room, and noting that her parents weren't about, continued, "—fucker."

"Yeah, he's having his ear chewed off by mum right now. Angelina's staying here tonight—he's getting worse. Whenever he gets drunk, he gets mean—"

"—and he's always bloody drunk, these days," Ron said, laying back down and rubbing his face with his hands. "What in the fuck was he thinking, saying that? To _Teddy?_ "

"He's not," Draco said, and everyone in the room suddenly remembered that he was there. "He's scared about my being accepted meaning that I'm forgiven, and that you’ll forget your brother. He sees me as a threat, but I don't think it's really because we're lavender," he said with a wry look at Harry. The Weasley children shared long looks; it really was quite obvious.

“Doesn’t make it acceptable,” Charlie added. Draco nodded at him.

"Even so. I threaten him. He's lashing out. It's not new, and I'm not hurt, or upset. I'd like to find a way to talk to him one on one when he's ready.” He pursed his lips on a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. He was just as tired as any of them. “One day."

"That's big of you," Harry said. He clenched his fists, the _Lumos_ charms in the lamps flickering slightly as a spike of anger pulsed through him. "That he'd try to infect Teddy with that thinking, though? How dare he?"

"It won't stand," Ron said. "I'll go talk to him this week. He needs help, honestly, and to take ownership. He's not the only one who lost Fred, and we can't keep letting him off the hook for this shite."

Hermione rubbed his back and they sat in silence that was eventually broken by Neville's enormous yawn, setting off a chain reaction of people calling it a night. Eventually, Mrs and Mr Weasley returned—"Molly and Arthur, we don't stand on ceremony," they said, with a set of hugs for Draco—and they were off, back at Grimmauld before they knew it.

"Overnights with your godson, hmm?" Draco said with a raised brow as he peeled off his boots at the front door.

Harry didn't bother to try to flounder for reasons. "Yeah. I wanted to ask about it earlier, but it hadn't come up. You're so good with kids, and with him, I thought—"

"You do know that I teach children, regularly, and that I enjoy it? And that I adore Teddifer?"

"Yeah, I do."

Harry followed him to the bedroom, sat on the bed and enjoyed the show as he stripped out of the rest of his clothes.

"I think it's a grand idea, Harry," he said quietly, nudging until Harry was splayed out on his back on the bed. He lay on top of him as he had so long ago, aligning their fingers and toes as best he could, his live, naked weight a balm to Harry's nerves. A warm, beautiful blanket; a person and a place where Harry could go to feel safe and loved; acres of softness to make wet with open-mouthed kisses, and hard planes, bones stronger than stone, and magic, deep, roiling, eternal.

"I agree," Harry murmured into his neck, lacing their fingers together and holding on tightly. "It is grand, isn't it?" Rolling them so he was on top and could sew kisses from Draco's scalp down, down, down to every part of him.

* * *

**Notes:** Not much to say this time around, other than I hope you’re well, and next chapter will be up by **February 12**. We’re approaching the end, friends—about three more chapters to go! As always, thanks for reading, commenting and kudos xx minta


	21. Pass This On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vignettes of encounters that are troubling, full of warmth, and blisteringly hot.
> 
> .  
> .  
> .
> 
> Note that all praise must go to Femme (femmequixotic), from whom I have lifted use of the name "Cissy" for Draco while cross-dressed. The fic is "When You Kiss Me (What A Lovely Way To Burn)" and I'm crediting it because it's a specific idea that I've never been able to let go of. Go read her fic!

* * *

**Friday, March 12, 2004**

"Dare."

"I dare you," Ron spoke slowly, eyes sweeping from Dean over the patch of lush grass of the meadow tucked behind the Burrow, and all the lounging bodies of their assembled friends, "to find the bottom of Seamus' bellybutton with your tongue."

"For the love of god," sighed Seamus. He gamely flopped onto his back and hiked up his shirt nonetheless.

"Considering you could force us to do practically anything while you're here, that you put yourself through such trials is truly baffling," drawled Draco, watching with a practised look of boredom as Dean crawled over to lick at Seamus' stomach.

“Bit of fun too juvenile for you, Malfoy?”

Draco remained quiet, but Seamus wasn’t really looking for an answer. After a fair bit of hesitation and squawking, applause and laughter erupted around them.

“Pull your shirt up before you blind one of us.” That was Ginny, perpetually having a laugh at Seamus’ expense. “Haven’t the Irish any sun? You’re giving Draco a run for his money, looking half-Veela this time of year.”

"Is this okay?" Harry directed the question up, softly, to the underside of Draco's chin. He got a little smile in response as Draco shifted, uncrossing his legs to flatten the surface of his lap for Harry to rest his tired head.

He mouthed, “Better?” 

Harry hummed in response, happy for the warm weight of Draco’s hand as he laid it to rest on his chest, the other stretched somewhere behind him for support.

“Blasted lovebirds, get a room already,” groused Ginny from their left, meeting Harry’s droopy-faced, unimpressed look with a wink. Harry re-settled his head and tugged free a fresh handful of blades of grass to split into strips with his thumbs.

It was unusually warm for March—"The hottest in the region _ever_ recorded," Hermione helpfully informed anyone who brought it up all day—"how's that for climate change deniers?"

Harry hadn’t the heart to remind her that it was unlikely that they’d be swayed by empirical evidence; why ruin her fun? Seamus was in town for one night only, flying to Australia the Muggle way for work and in need of an overnight layover, and so Ron had decided to blend his birthday celebrations with the visit. He declared it a "proper lads night" and invited most of the men from their year at Hogwarts to the backyard of the Burrow for pre-drinks, though a healthy dose of magic mushrooms, Gillyweed and other low-grade psychedelics were added to the mix as soon as Luna arrived. The sky above their heads was melting from cobalt to inky indigo as lips loosened and a friendly game of Truth or Dare began to heat up.

"Suck a—lemon, Malfoy," Seamus quipped. 

"You can tell me to suck a dick if you want. Know that I'd enjoy it," Draco muttered. Seamus wasn't thrilled with the addition of Draco into the group, but had so far (largely) held his tongue about it. Harry was sure that would change once he polished off the bottle of wine he'd been working on over the last hour. Everyone watched as Dean placed his wand on the flat of his left palm.

"Ready?" Harry asked. At Dean's nod, Harry concentrated just enough to levitate the wand for Dean to flick so that it spun round and round.

"Show-off," Draco whispered, though he brushed Harry's hair back from his forehead, fingertips warm against his skin. Harry fought to keep from closing his eyes. He’d been at the worksite by seven each morning, and then all over London all week, bombarded with meetings. A quiet Friday night in was what he needed, but Ron had pushed his party back to include Seamus, and Harry couldn’t bail now.

The wand tip landed in the direction of Padma. She did as she’d always done.

“Dare.”

"Cut your fringe right now, no mirror allowed." Much hemming-and-hawing but eventually, a dusting of black hair fell. There were tears, and then tequila.

Another spin of another wand. Luna. Truth.

"If you couldn't date Pansy, who here would you want to have a go with?"

Luna giggled. "That's easy—everybody." So much groaning.

Luna's spin. All eyes turned to Draco.

"Dare."

"Oh, but I wanted you to pick a truth," Luna lamented, eyes like saucers, pupils pools of black big enough to drown in. She transfigured a daisy into a feather and back again, entranced by her work. Harry was way, _way_ too sober for this. He didn’t know how the fuck Draco did it all the time. 

Draco didn't miss a beat. "I'll take truth, but I'm only answering yes or no."

Luna spoke without looking up from the ostrich feather she stroked lovingly. "Was Michael Corner your first?"

“First what?”

“Lover,” she drew the word out, gathering _ooohs_ from the peanut gallery. Harry rolled his eyes—he’d missed the part as a teenager where these games occurred, and found them laughably juvenile. That, and he was normally embarrassed by his lack of normal-people-things experience, so shite like Never-Have-I-Ever wasn’t any fun to play.

_Kissed someone in the Herbology tents? No._

_Had a friend or pet or family member die in front of you? Why, yes, all three. Isn’t this game fun?_

"Yes." Draco pulled his wand out to move on to his turn, then paused. "How'd you know about that?"

"This is going to be good," Pansy purred, sitting up from the prone position she'd taken when her dose of mushrooms came over her. She had bits of twigs in her bob; Parvati was kind enough to spell them free for her, though also tipsy enough that she ended up pulling them out roughly, causing a series of surprised yelps.

Luna dropped the feather to stare dreamily at him. "He told all of Ravenclaw so in fourth year, but nobody believed him other than me.” She smiled wickedly. “ _I_ could tell that your auras had twined."

"Ew, twined?" Ron's face screwed up like he'd done a shot of tequila. On second thought, Harry realized that he likely had, the bottle having been passed down the row of bodies, now clutched in the hands of a ruddy-cheeked Neville.

_Gods, this is going to be such a mess._

"Fourth year?" That was Dean, head dipping in grudgingly impressed acknowledgement. "Wow, that's—wow."

Draco scoffed, raising an eyebrow at Harry and looking pointedly at the wand in his palm. Harry blinked and it rose to float an inch above his hand. He was beginning to forget that wandless or wordless magic was a difficulty for most people—it had become second nature with him.

"Just because Gryffindor tower was late to the party didn't mean the rest of us kept our knickers on with locks and keys," he grumbled, flicking the wand to set it spinning. Hermione.

"Truth."

Draco stared at her for a long moment, in his intense, silent way. "How often do you wash your hair?"

She gawked, surprised. "Um,” touching a curl, flipping it away. “Weekly, on Sundays."

Draco made a little sound, leaned back. The circle was quiet, but the stares pointed Draco’s way said volumes. 

" _What?_ It's nice, and I've wondered."

“Waste of a spin and you call yourself a wit,” Seamus said under his breath. Harry was sure of Draco’s eye roll, didn’t have to see it to know it was withering. Splitting the blades of grass the way he’d typically shred a label on a bottle of—

“Beer?”

Harry mouthed a silent _thank you_ in Ginny’s direction, sitting up at last to neck a few sips of the cold Carlsburg she passed his way.

“Cheers,” Draco held his bottle of butterbeer out to clink against Harry’s. “I was wondering how long you’d hold out for,” he added, under his breath. Harry could let that morsel of tension go, then—he still felt weird about drinking at all, at least in front of Draco. It felt like he was breaking some promise, though it wasn’t one he’d ever made.

 _Stop finding things to feel bad about and get on with life_ , he thought, the words so like Draco’s though the internal voice was all his own.

Spin, spin, spin. The sun set properly and soon Ron lit a bonfire, flames electric blue at the tips and icy white in the centre, spewing warm air outwards. Harry wanted to ask when they'd be leaving for the bar—he wanted to stay sober as long as possible but was feeling sleepy already without the stimulation of movement, or food, or something.

Luna spun and landed on Draco again. "Truth."

"How many people have you had sex with?"

Not even a shrug. "I don't know."

The answer was met with scoffs, and though he didn't move at all, Harry could sense tension stilling the body next to him. He sipped his beer, counted to three before turning to check Draco's face. His jaw tensed up as he swallowed, and the vein in his temple where the tips of his hair now brushed, throbbed. Internally, Draco was low-grade freaking out.

"Not an answer, mate," said Ron, gesturing with a bottle of cider.

"Yes, it is." Draco smoothed his shirt down over his stomach. Yep, yes, he was stressing out about the line of questioning but was stubborn enough to refuse to look Harry in the eye or saying so. Unfortunately, in a circle full of Gryffindors, he may have met his match where stubbornness was concerned.

Parvati raised her hand, ever the diplomat in situations like these. When most attention focused on her, she lowered it. "You could give a range," she suggested.

Draco squished his lips and shrugged. "I cannot, or I would have."

"Oh come on, a range could be like, between two and two thousand," added Pansy. Draco shot her a look that was the definition of nasty, and Harry opened his mouth, ready to intervene.

"Perfect. Within that range,” Draco spat. Harry shut his mouth. “Have I fulfilled the terms of your question?"

Draco directed the question to Luna, who wrapped her fuzzy cardigan more tightly around her, a rare frown on her face. The thing was covered in blue and pink baubles that seemed to shift according to her mood. They were faintly vibrating, which Harry took to mean that she was...confused.

"What's your definition of sex?"

Draco snorted. "When something has the word 'sex' in it." This was met with mixed reviews from the men in the group.

“What, you counting handies in toilets as solo sex, then?" Seamus asked. "If I gave meself one, does that count?” Dean and Ron both snorted as Draco’s ears went pink.

"All of you hetero idiots, shut it.” 

“Now we’re getting a lashing,” Ron laughed, and Harry felt a heat that had everything to do with a need to protect Draco from the hurt caused by ill-placed jibes rise up his chest. But Draco looked him in the eye and gave him the smallest of shakes of his head.

“If your girlfriends had _oral sex_ with some other bloke, it would count as cheating. Sure seems like sex then, doesn’t it?" The laughter quickly dried up as Draco shut the boys down handily. Hermione stared holes into the sides of Ron’s head—he was about to have a talking to all his own, once she got him alone. 

"And just because you are the proud owners some piddly cocks doesn’t mean that one has to be involved for it to be _sex_ , or would you like to explain your definitions to Pans and Luna here?”

“Aye, that’s not—not at all what we meant,” Neville grumbled, looking abashed for having laughed along to begin with. He didn’t bother finishing, the set of Draco’s jaw stern enough for him to swallow the rest of that sentence.

“Listen—I kept count until about fifty, and then it started getting iffy, and my data was missing info—"

"Data," Harry breathed, in something like wonder. He didn’t mean to, wished that he could have kept it in. It was such an incongruous word when talking about fucking.

Draco swung around to glare at him

"Yes, _data_ —I had a list—"

Pansy gasped. "Did you have an actual little black book? You _cocotte_."

That was the last straw. "All of you, _quiet_." Draco exhaled heavily, smoothing his hair back to regain some composure. "I know for a fact that your number is always two higher than your partners know about while you're dating, what with all the cheating that ensues. I bet Luna thinks she's number eleven and you'll stop there, doesn't she?"

This was enough to stifle Parvati’s giggles and get Ginny and Neville to stop their whispered side conversation about what sounded suspiciously like stories about _their_ first times, which Harry could do without overhearing. Luna frowned down at the ground, pretending great interest in the sod between her fingers. Perhaps she wasn't pretending, but Harry was quite sure that Draco's words had found their mark.

"Yes, I did keep a list, because I too once held the belief that the number of people you've had sex with meant something, but then I realized that the number doesn't mean anything, _Pansy_ , thank you ever so for calling me a promiscuous whore, a title I'd happily claim if you'd said it like it was a good thing." Harry realized that now was a good time to literally shut his mouth, as he'd been gawping much in the way that Ron was, and a few others by the looks of stunned chastisement around the fire. "I didn't exactly have the opportunity to get names off everyone, and was tiring of writing, like, _Fit Iranian at Hampstead Heath_ in with a guess at age, so I stopped counting. And I can’t be the only person who’s ever woken up and not been sure what they did, with whom, but if I am, then there’s your lesson for the day." He took a swig from the bottle and licked his lips, and never once during the whole tirade looked over at Harry. 

"Don’t fuck people who won’t be able to remember it—it screws with their _data._ " He exhaled, the silence surrounding them interrupted only by the crackling of the fire. "Counting is for nerds, anyway. Now, it's my turn, isn't it?"

"You never want to talk about anything scandalous," groused Pansy. "I'm off to the loo, this is boring now."

"I, for one, can't wait for that divorce to be finalized," Draco muttered under his breath, watching her trample back to the house.

Harry raised his eyebrows, an _I know, right_? unspoken between them, but it was a cover. A cold wriggly thing moved through him, twisting around his insides. _Couldn’t remember_ wasn’t right. Harry knew full well what it was like to wake up, the hours between late and early completely lost to drink. But never had he woken and wondered about anything much worse than making a fool of himself. There had, one time, been knuckles red raw like he'd been punching a brick wall. Not a person—he'd damaged himself, not someone else—or so he hoped.

To wake and turn one's head and see—what? Greasy hair on the pillow next to yours? A body unattached to a name you knew? To wonder what they'd done—what _you'd_ done, allowed, mumbled _no_ , to, or perhaps you couldn't speak anymore—

_“It's nice when he gets so drunk that he shuts up for once, you know?"_

Draco settled his bottle on the ground next to him and placed his wand in his palm, raising his chin slightly towards Harry, radiating a cold, collected pride. Harry wondered what painful, questioning memories that haughty mask covered for.

"If you would," he said. Harry dutifully levitated the wand and watched in continued silence as Draco flicked it, his breaths leaving him slightly faster than normal. He was embarrassed, Harry realized, but not necessarily of the thoughts of others—he was avoiding the eyes of only one person now, and that person was Harry.

"Those who find the need to talk about sex the most are often the people having the least of it," Draco growled at no one in particular. His wand landed nearly back at him, but not quite.

"Your turn.” Draco bumped his wand up into the air and caught it in a blink of the eye. For a split second, Harry was tempted to grab for it too—sometimes, he weirdly missed being its owner. "Good thing too. I was about to ask if you'd had Felix Felicis for breakfast—you've been spared this grim ordeal far too long."

Out loud, Harry said, "Dare" but while he held Draco's eyes, flickering brightly with the reflected light of the fire, he said _I don't care if your number is a thousand. Make me do something mortifying so we can end this and get out of here._

The edge of Draco's mouth not facing the pointed stares of their assembled friends quirked up.

"I dare you to kiss," he tapped his chin thoughtfully, leaned in. Harry was poised, heart pounding in his throat, slightly terrified to lock lips before an audience but also very, very willing to do so because he never didn't want to kiss Draco.

Luckily, Seamus' groan cut the tension of the moment. "S'not fair to go daring someone to kiss you when it's your boyfriend now, is it?"

Draco's eyes swept over to him. "...Seamus. With tongue. For five seconds."

Seamus let off a groan and a string of _no_ 's, immediately getting to his feet, the Hawaiian-print shirt he wore flapping open where he’d missed a button at his chest. “I’m practically married! Jessica will have me by the bollocks if she finds out Harry bloody Potter’s kissed me and not her.”

“Fair’s fair, Seamus,” Harry started, getting to his feet. But Seamus was already backing away over the hill.

"I only have to do it if ye catch me!"

Harry rolled his eyes, let him get all of three steps before he waved a hand, stopping him short with a _Colloportus._

"Does it count if we do it upside down?" Harry asked mock-thoughtfully, glad to see a grin erupt on Draco's face. It was bright enough to drown out Seamus' repeated shrieks about being released, and that his girlfriend back home who _would_ consider what they were about to do as having oral sex with Harry Potter, et cetera.

"Might be trickier to get the tongue in that way." Draco leaned back, propped on his elbows, and finished the butterbeer, tossing the bottle up and vanishing it with a thought. "Make it ten seconds and we've got a deal."

* * *

"Harry? Is that you?"

Harry had tried to be silent as a dormouse he re-entered Grimmauld Place later that night, and succeeded right up until the point when he kicked away a bit of garbage only to learn it was a sleeping doxy, setting off a certain amount of frenzied biting of his wand hand, and quite a bit of roaring on his part.

Draco rubbed sleep crusts from his eyes, his _Lumos_ a ball of purest white light, filling the galley of the kitchen that Harry had, in his ineptitude, left dark.

"M'sorry," he slurred the words together, smacking his lips together to try again. "I'm sorry. _I_ am sorry."

"Are you bleeding?" Draco padded over to where Harry sat defeated and pulled his actively bleeding digits into his own hands, turning them left to right. "Jesus. We ought to get an exterminator in here," he muttered. He paused and sniffed the air, loosening his grip on Harry's hand. "Wait. Are you bladdered?"

"Mmmmm." Harry figured making a sound was better than words. Words were...difficult.

"I'll take that as a yes," Draco sighed. Harry couldn’t help but hiss when he prodded a gash; it felt like it cut down to the bone. "Let's get you upstairs so I can clean these up and put you to bed. Here." He stripped from the t-shirt he wore and wrapped a portion of it around Harry's fingers. The cotton smelled like him, was still warm. Harry held the big wadded ball of it up to his nose and inhaled greedily.

“S’good to be home,” he sighed, closing his eyes.

"Hold that tightly, alright? Keep pressure on it. It’s not the time for sleep yet—up."

The two of them made easy work of the stairs, or so Harry thought until he bungled the last step and quite nearly face-planted into the wall.

"Coulda swore more stairs here," he mumbled from a heap on the floor. Draco stood in only his pants on the last step, miles of legs and little pants, and not anything else from what Harry could make out. He gazed further up—torso, shaking a bit, then his face, which was mostly covered by a hand as though he could hardly look at Harry for want to strangle him.

Or wait. Perhaps he was covering his mouth, to keep from audibly laughing?

"You mad at me?" Harry asked, heavy head weaving as he sat on the closed lid of the toilet. Draco re-appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the ball of light following him. He perched on the edge of the tub and peeled the t-shirt, now sticky with blood, away from his mangled hand.

“No,” Draco answered curtly. The wounds were quickly cleaned with a _Scourgify_ that reeked of antiseptic. The lack of warning led Harry to hiss and slam a fist into his thigh at the unexpected sting.

“Sorry,” Draco added.

“S’okay,” Harry bit his lip to keep further sounds from coming out. He really must be getting soft, if pain like this could make his eyes water. Truth be told, he hadn’t suffered a grave injury in a long time—almost as though it wasn’t normal to nearly die once a season.

"Why? Should I be angry with you?" Draco asked quietly, his attention focused on wrapping lengths of white cotton gauze around each wound. His eyes never left his work. It made Harry squirm, to be doted on when he'd been bad.

"Cause I went and got pissed with the boys, and thas not good," he mumbled. Draco lowered his mangled hand—all patched up now—and raised his good one to his lips, kissed his knuckles.

"I'm not angry, pet. With Finnegan in the mix, colour me hardly surprised. If you're upset with yourself in the morning, that's another conversation.” He rose, and Harry followed, trailing the low glow of the ball of light floating just over his head into the master bedroom. “Trust me that this isn't a conversation you want to have while drunk. Come to bed—I will be angry with you if I'm not back under the sheets in one minute.”

The sheets rustled louder than Harry remembered. Perhaps it was all the turning about he was doing. Draco lay still, but Harry couldn’t fathom it, not with so many thoughts buzzing in his head.

Draco huffed, turned from his side to his back, flopping long arms onto the comforter. “What is it? You clearly need to say something—out with it.”

“You know you could have come too,” Harry whispered hoarsely. He’d had a few cigarillos, and his throat sounded like it had been tumbling rocks. “It was a lads night, and you’re a lad.”

Draco’s teeth shone in the low light. Harry propped himself up and scooched closer to inspect why—it was because he was smiling. Odd, that.

“I’m aware. Weasley said as much when he invited me along if you remember, and while I appreciate the intention, it’s not really my sort of do.”

Harry threw a leg out, over the blanket. There—the cool air was much better on his skin.

“But you know you could, right?”

“It’s borderline saccharine, but I’ll admit that it’s sweet how much you’re both trying to involve me. But you and the lads—you exist as a group, and the designation is to keep your partners out. It just so happens that everyone else’s is a woman.” Draco rolled to face him, pulling the blanket up to cover his exposed shoulder before Harry could cup it. He liked to think that he’d notice when it felt less like the meeting place of so many bones and smoothed out.

“Think of it like the Gryffindor boys club. Know that I’m aware of the open invitation, and don’t be alarmed if I never take you up on it.”

Harry heaved a sigh of relief. “Okay.”

That was fine. Gryffindors and Slytherins always did do things separately.

“Okay?”

“Yessss.” Harry slumped down under the blankets, warm, and sure that sleep was just around the corner.

But then again, there is as so much left to say. And the rustling—had sheets _ever_ been so loud?

“...but Draco.”

The arms were back, slapping down on either side of Draco’s body.

“ _Yes_ , Harry?”

“Ron really liked his peasant—peh—gift.”

“That’s wonderful,” he grit out. “Do we need to talk about this right now?”

“Because _you’re_ the reason it was good, so I have to remember to thank you for it.” Harry reached out to touch the tip of Draco’s upturned nose. “Boop,” he said, grinning at the look of alarm on his face. “It’s only polite.”

“You picked out box seats for an entire season of the Cannons all on your own, I’m afraid. Need I remind you that I would _never_ have recommended you do so. You know this means we’re going to be asked to attend their matches now? Where we can be seen, and might be thought of thusly as fellow fans? In _public_?”

“Next match s'in a week. You're going to look so good in Day-Glo," Harry snorted at the thought. "And you _did_ help,” he pointed in the direction of Draco’s body, a moving target as the bed lurched sideways, like a boat riding stormy seas.

“I did not,” Draco retorted.

“You did, you did! I couldn’t ask real you, because you were at work, but I asked my book, because you’re brill at gifts, and book-you told me.”

Silence met this divulsion. Then,

“Do you mean the journal I gave you for Christmas?”

“Mmmmm,” Harry answered. He had to sit up to try to stop the rocking. It was better than lying down, but only marginally. Who’d set the bed at such an angle, anyhow?

“You’re supposed to use that to discover what you like to do,” Draco said. He sounded hurt about it, which didn’t make any sense at all.

“Ch’yeah, and I _discovered_ what I wanted to get for his gift, and then I asked it to help me with what to get _you,_ and now I’ve got these presents piled—”

Harry slapped a hand over his mouth. He hadn’t meant to say that.

“You what?”

“Oops,” he whispered.

Draco pushed up to rest on his forearms. Even in the low light, the furrows on his brow were visible. “No, tell me. What’s this about presents? You didn’t go shopping in the state you’re in now, did you?”

“Weeks ‘go,” Harry gestured with a hand, then washed it over his face. The rolling of the bed-boat worsened. “Saved all that time on Ron’s present, so I got you lots. But I can’t wrap them nice, and Kreacher’sbusy, y’know? So—I’ll ask Kreacher tomorrow.” He nodded to accentuate the point.

“Harry,” Draco sounded sad now, so Harry crawled over and held him, like a koala gripping a tree.

“Don’t be sad,” he pled. His voice really was shot, so it came out gravelly. “Happy! Presents!”

“I’m not sad, you berk, I—" he sighed, and wrested an arm free to hook around Harry’s shoulders. He touched his hair, the most soothing of gestures, and kept on petting it flat, though of course it never worked.

“You’re not supposed to use the journal like that,” he elaborated after both their breathing slowed and melded into one tempo. Draco’s heartbeat was steady and slow; Harry could fall asleep to it anytime, and he was close to it when Draco added, “It’s supposed to be about you.”

“S’my journal,” Harry mumbled into his chest. “And, and—s’bout me. It makes me happy if you’re happy,” Harry said. “You need anything, _anything—_ " He swept an arm out in a wide arc, trying to encompass the all of anything. 

“ _Anything_ , ever, I’ll get it for you. If you needa name—you needa name?" He tapped the centre of Draco's chest. Not so hollow, he thought. "No problem. You can have mine. I'll give you my name if you want.”

A breeze rustled Harry’s hair—warm breaths from Draco’s laughing mouth. “Thank you for that generous offer,” he drawled, “but I believe that Draco suits me just fine.”

Harry pushed him gently by the shoulder, snorted in a wholly undignified way. 

“No, silly! Not _that_ name. Potter, I mean. You can have that one.”

He was met with silence again, and a freezing up of Draco’s body, but by this time, Harry was far, far too gone to notice.

“S’okay though, don’t worry bout anything,” he added, patting Draco’s shoulder. He was nice and warm and so inviting to be slept on. “You need it, I’ll get it for you. Always. Easy.”

“Yeah,” Draco patted his back, his voice hoarse now too. “Thanks, Harry. I’ll remember that.”

A few minutes passed in silence until Harry’s voice broke through once more.

“Draco?” he whispered.

“Yeah? What?”

“I think,” he hiccoughed ominously. “I think I’m gonna be seasick.”

* * *

The morning after the Gryffindor Lads Big Night Out found Harry useless, swallowing a vial of hangover potion and full litre water as soon as he woke. He didn't even question why there was any such potion in the house until mid-afternoon, earning a sniff from Draco's direction.

"I started brewing it for Pans, the wench," he answered from the other room. "She was going on about how great the pills are, but they're bog-useless—the actives in the recipe reduce in potency once dried. She's basically been flushing her coins down the toilet, buying as much as the stuff as she does."

He entered the living room, a tray laden with steaming bowls of chicken soup and a tin of soda crackers floating before him.

"Thanks for leaving it out for me. I might honestly be dead without it." Harry gratefully took a bowl with shaky hands. Even with the potion, he was still delicate, studiously avoiding strenuous work and brightly lit rooms.

Draco snorted. "I made you drink half of it when you were done your retching, or I knew you wouldn't make it up alive."

Harry groaned.

"What?" Draco selected crackers to lay on his plate—six fanned around the bowl. "You forgot about the violent upheavals bit?"

Harry groaned. "I forgot all of it. _Fuck_ ," he breathed. He reached out and scooped a handful of crackers, breaking them into bits directly into the broth. Draco's usual sneer of disdain at the number of crumbs he produced was nowhere to be found as Harry _Accio_ 'd the remote, fumbling to turn on the telly to something banal. Perhaps a recording of EastEnders—he liked that one, and as much as Draco pretended he was above it, he loved it too.

It was strange, then, when Harry found the programme and settled into the couch cushions, that Draco's eyes didn't move from him over to the screen. He stared, openly, far too obviously. Harry met his eyes, spoon halfway to his mouth, a ball of worry starting to form inside him.

"What is it? I am sorry—are you—"

"I'm not cross. You apologized plenty last night," he said, staring all the while.

"What is it, then? Have I got something on my face?"

"You, it's just—" He licked his lips, looking for something that Harry couldn't see. "You don't remember anything?"

"Not even the bloody doxy attack, which, thank you, by the way," he frowned at his bandaged fingers. "Should I?"

Draco swallowed thickly, jaw tensing. "No. It's nothing." He spooned up a bit of soup away from himself, took a sip. Returned his spoon to the bowl to let it cool. He looked back and Harry caught him at it, held his eyes and pushed a question through.

_Is it really nothing? You could find the memory and show me._

Draco snapped a saltine, chewed it as he spoke to Harry only in his mind, like a ventriloquist’s trick.

_No. You did mention presents, though. As in, multiple presents, specifically for me. And the prospect of getting Kreacher to wrap them for you, though you might as well give them to me as they are, now the crup's out of the bag._

Harry exhaled. Nothing so bad after all. He did have a penchant for drunkenly spilling secrets, but as far as secrets went, that one wasn't bad at all.

_After this episode, I'll show you._

They ate in silence punctuated only by the clinking of spoons and Draco's occasional utterances.

"Can't _believe_ Sharon," he muttered, setting his bowl and plate down.

"Why'd you eat your soup like that?" Harry asked. Draco raised a brow

" _Like ships that go out to sea, I spoon my soup away from me,_ " he intoned. "Soup-related etiquette."

"Your mum's doing?" Draco gave a little nod, and Harry craned his neck to inspect his bowl.

"You finished it all though," he said, gaze fixed on the dip of Draco's upper lip, and the rosy fullness of the one below. Now that they'd eaten and he felt semi-human again, he wanted to take him upstairs and do things to those lips.

"Don't tell her," Draco said, chin low and eyes wide, flirty.

"I'll keep your secret," Harry replied. "Am I doing it all wrong, then? Might I need some correction?"

Draco's cool facade crumbled as he shook his head at Harry's obviousness and curled into him. "Between the crumbling a handful of saltines into it, and the blowing signalling an inherent level of impatience, I think eating out of the right side of the bowl is hardly at the top of your list of soup-related issues." He placed a kiss under his ear, the kind that made his eyes flutter shut of their own accord. "I can tell you're about two minutes away from falling asleep or doing terrible things to me, and I'm over being nice to you without concrete reward, so I think now would be a wonderful time to take me upstairs and shower me with gifts, and show me all the things you can do with your mouth, yes?"

Harry stood and made Draco stand on the sofa, even convinced him to give a little jump and wrap his long legs around his waist, thighs digging in at his hips as he held on. He may have skipped his morning work-out, but walking up two flights of stairs with Draco attached to him ought to make up for it.

"Yes," Harry agreed, Draco's rumbly laugh vibrating through him, "let's."

* * *

Having finally provided the gifts that Kreacher (and the house itself, apparently) deemed necessary, Grimmauld seemed to glow a little brighter. All in all, it hadn’t been extravagant—a dressing gown in rich black and midnight blue silk, proper pyjamas, a Burberry scarf and black and tan riding gloves so soft that even Draco gasped as he stroked them, beds of tissue paper in the boxes beneath them crinkling. Shearling lined slippers, too, for both of them, an assortment of underwear—mostly of the jockstrap variety, though a few thongs gained a raised eyebrow from Draco and a fiery blush from Harry—and an enormous array of Kiel’s products for the bath, and finally, an everlasting burner and set of nesting cauldrons of all types—copper, sterling silver, granite, and stainless steel, with stir rods and measuring cups and beakers in unbreakable glass to match.

“For your study,” Harry explained, oddly worried as he sat in bed, naked again, sweat cooling rapidly.

Draco carefully removed errant tags and spelled things into their new places.

“I don’t know that I agreed to a new study,” he said. He liked the things—he’d said so himself, and Harry knew when he was lying. He'd deflected a bit from how much he liked them by talking about the need to shop for Teddy—linens and toys, and healthy treats, and second sets of clothes. But still, this irksome holding out of total acceptance. It rubbed like sandpaper against the soft part of him that was reaching out, waiting for an answering hand to grasp onto. All he needed was _yes—_ why must that be so hard?

“Why are you making this a thing?” He tried to cut the whine from his voice and failed. “You basically only go back to your flat to grab a fresh change of pants and check on potions—”

“Has it ever occurred to you that I’m doing it on purpose?”

“Yes, actually,” Harry retorted. He scratched his chin; it needed a shave, was prickly enough that it had scraped Draco’s face pink around the mouth.

“Has it occurred to you to wonder why?”

Harry circled a finger into the sheet. “Because you need a place to get away sometimes?” He closed his eyes. It didn’t feel good to admit where his mind wandered, but better out than in. “To have, er—a break from me. I’m sure I’m tiring, I know I’m still a shite Occlumens, and I find my own thoughts annoying, I can’t imagine, I—”

Draco stilled his hand. “Because I need to know that I can do things on my own.”

“You can do things on your own here,” Harry said stubbornly. “All this stuff—it's just doubles of your things. It'd be easier if you, just, you know—moved them here. It’d be your study.”

“Not on paper,” Draco said, and Harry started to see what he was getting at. “Not how it counts if we were to...”

He shrugged, but Harry heard the unsaid bit loud and clear. _If you tire of me—if we finally do what’s expected of us and break up for good. If I become too much, a burden._

Draco had been kicked to the curb once, and the flat was the cushion he’d fallen onto. It was the only home he’d ever known other than the manor because he’d never really seen Hogwarts as home, had he? In that way, it was the only thing that had ever really been his—safe, a retreat from anyone and anything—the whole of the magical world, even.

“I’m not asking you to sell the flat,” Harry said gently. “You could let it. You know—a nice couple of students at uni or something.”

“Middle-aged couple with a chihuahua,” he mused.

Draco sucked his cheeks, thinking. Really, he was trying to keep from smiling at the thought. Harry melted, recognizing the reticence to believe the good thing. 

“Sure. Whenever you’re ready to do that, your name would still be on the lease. You’d own it, still. And when you want, you could—" Harry scratched at the back of his neck, wishing for some clothes and using instead the blanket to cover himself. It seemed not done to speak of these things naked, but even covered, he was unsure of how to phrase it. “We could, you know—dig out whatever antiquated lease is on this place, and put your name on it.”

“How so?” Draco cracked his knuckles and spoke to the blankets. It was pathetic, Harry thought, that they couldn’t even look at each other while talking about these things. He found it charming on Draco, bit could perfectly imagine Andromeda saying as much. Boys, still, rather than men, when it came to the truly difficult conversations.

Harry wondered if his heart was beating half as fast as his own, to talk like this.

“You know—half of the things. Half of the closet,” he looked over to it, saw Draco’s lips twinge. His closet was a pittance—Draco had to stoop to get through the doorway of the thing, as the doorframe only seemed to care about accommodating those of Harry's stature or smaller.

“It’ll need work, and so much wizarding space if I’m only to take half.”

“Yes, well, there might need to be some modifications. You'll need half of the cupboards in the bath, obviously, and a promise to share the use of the floors and windows with me.”

Draco smiled properly down into his lap.

"Do we use Spell-o-Tape down the centres of all the rooms, to split them evenly?"

Harry shrugged. "I thought you might find that gauche."

A breath, just a tiny huff, so small that others might not catch it. A laugh, albeit a small one. 

“Are you asking me to move in with you right now?”

“I could be?”

Draco thought about it in silence for a long while. He joined Harry under the covers, their long, lazy day melting into a slow-moving night.

Draco pulled the sheet over his face, huffed into it. “How about you ask me about it again in August? At least then I can pretend that it’s been a year.”

Harry followed him under. It was like being eleven again, making blanket forts and hiding under them when storms raged outside the walls of Hogwarts. He in wireframes and the blond boy with the pointy face, finding each other again. 

“A year since what?”

Draco mashed his lips together, shook his head.

“Oh come on! Please? If it’s a secret, you can whisper it to me,” Harry said. Draco’s smile sparkling, eyes all mischief. He pulled in close, lips to the shell of Harry’s ear as Harry held his breath.

“Since I fell in love with you again.”

* * *

**Late March**

With spring came a sense of ease, the pitter-patter of rain the soundtrack to days and nights alike. Harry's desire for home to be a shared space was realized in spurts; Teddy's first overnight was a success—they returned him the next day without any bumps or bruises.

"Still has all his fingers and toes?" Andromeda asked Draco, one thick black eyebrow raised.

"And then some," Draco said, a wry smile on his lips.

"Gran I sawed a snake and Harry _talked to it!_ "

"Hmmm," Andromeda looked impressed. "Another trip to the bird sanctuary, I presume? Pray tell, what did the snake have to say for himself?"

"Herself," Harry corrected, taking Draco's scarf and throwing it over the bannister, along with their jackets. He spelled his glasses dry, impressed when the charm worked properly, for once. "She was wondering where her...friend the mouse had scurried off to."

Truth be told, having Teddy around on weekends was easy, and made Harry feel more like a stable, capable adult, and less like a child in a grown-up's clothes. Narcissa had a newly formed habit of cancelling on Draco more often than not, a habit he explained away as newfound confidence in herself as she did new things and saw new people, so he was suddenly around a little more often too.

Harry found himself more relaxed in meetings with the Hogwarts Board of Governors or the Wizengamot Oversight Committee. His worries were about the cost of bricks and what to have for tea, and whether he'd have enough time to pop to the shops to grab the gingerale Draco liked before Weasley family dinner. He was still always the youngest person in the room, but when he spoke to people in the education field about what it was like to run a home or boarding school, they all told him the same thing—it was incredibly difficult with no let-up, but also the most rewarding work he’d ever know. He had McGonnagal on-side as a trustee, and kept busy hiring the best staff money could buy to ensure that his _orphanage for lonely waifs_ wasn’t that at all, but a well-rounded home for any magical youth who needed it. A place to find safety and care, and a proper education too. He was sure in his decision making now that he was sure that he was doing exactly what he was supposed to with his life.

"' _Smart fashion statements or a traipse into the practical and mundane? You be the judge as war-hero Harry Potter, 23, takes in the fresh air with companion, former bête-noire, Draco Malfoy, 23, and unknown child at Ipswich Pitch last month',_ " Draco shook his head, folding the paper and passing it to Harry. It was the first they'd made the paper in weeks, and it felt like a sign, somehow, happening the morning he left to a visit a magical prep-school for Muggleborn children in Hamburg.

"They clocked your coat as Muggle," Harry smoothed a finger over the black line of Draco's lithe body in the photograph. He kept catching the baseball cap Harry tossed to him, wind rustling his dark hair. The image was a little fuzzy—likely enlarged, the three of them caught initially in the background of someone else's family photo. Harry internally chastised himself—they likely wouldn't have been recognized at all if he'd kept the hat on, pulled low to his sunglasses. He’d been selfish to take it off to go up on the air. The front page, because he hadn’t wanted to use a sticking charm on the hat. He felt a need to be punished for this oversight, and stewed in the feeling, hoping it would pass. Maybe so—maybe not. Maybe, probably, it was the sort of thing he’d bring to Martin and have him explain why that reaction was normal, but not healthy for him.

As luck would have it, Teddy's back was towards the camera, sat on a blanket between them, his pink hair obscured by the blur overlaid on him by Prophet staff.

"Yes, it seems like they can't make up their minds as to whether that goes in the column for _he's pro-Muggle rights_ or in the negative for _how dare he wear a jacket that costs the equivalent to nearly one-hundred galleons_?"

"I wonder why they blurred Teddy," Harry mused, pouring milk over a bowl of cornflakes. He was going to be late to the portkey office if he wasn't careful, and breakfasts with Draco had a tendency to run long. He liked to pretend it was because Draco was talkative; in reality, it was because he liked to wait until Draco was the one who had to run off, giving him a goodbye kiss and then locking up the house, that order of events setting certain of his ingrained anxieties to bed for the day better than if he were to leave Draco behind to do the job.

"Victoria had them do it," Draco said nonchalantly.

He stopped crunching and swallowed, ears pricked. "What do you mean? You knew about this?"

Draco nodded, eyes wide like this wasn't news at all.

"How'd you—what? Since when—what's Victoria on about, now?"

"Nothing," Draco reached for the paper and snatched it back from Harry's loosened grip. "I've visited her a few times about my own media do's and don'ts, and since you're no longer an active client when it comes to your daily life, I suppose she's moved her attentions to me. Between her and Sparks, they've quashed a few stories in the last while."

"Oh," Harry stood, faintly stunned, watching Draco polish off toast with marmalade, daintily licking a spot of jam from his pointer finger.

"Yes. Only a few. They used all the death threats I've received as reason why printing Teddy's name or identifying features would be reckless endangerment of a child." Draco smiled down at the paper, but really, he was smiling at himself. "I thought of that one."

"Clever."

"Thank you. Now, it's time you headed out. I'll see Friday night?"

Harry crossed over behind him to steal a kiss, sweet with sugar and bitter with coffee, and to feel Draco's weight pressing back against his tight hug.

"Yeah. Here? I'm not sure when I'll get in—I'm booked on the last portkey out, but there's a chance we'll wrap early if I don't get trapped into a meeting with the Americans on the trip. There's a school in New York—"

"Harry?" Draco said. "Remember that you can say 'no' to things, and no one will die on account of you turning down the offer of one more NGO, alright?"

"Yeah," Harry sighed, pushing his glasses up from where'd they fallen near the tip of his nose. He needed a new pair—if only there was enough time in the day.

"Have a lovely trip. Love you," Draco said, smiling at Harry from where he remained perched on his seat. He turned back to the paper and immediately scanned a new article to dive into. Words caught somewhere between the buzzing litany of thoughts and the lump in Harry's oesophagus—

_be careful double-check you've put up the wards on your flat and don't forget to check for magical signatures when you arrive, will you be alone tonight_

_call Pansy, she could come over the two of you could have a fun night in or Blaise,_

_three is better than two_

_don't spend it alone,_

_what are you having for dinner_

_have you planned to speak to a therapist yet is that what you're doing this morning at half-eleven I could see the time blocked in your diary_

_what for_

_what's the name of the hotel_

_say it say it_

_I'm staying at the Hilton you can call my room direct it's 1442 but that's the thirteenth floor, not the fourteenth you knew that of course you do, the front desk knows to patch you through immediately I'll sleep with my phone on I miss you already_

_Draco I'm scared_

_if anything happens come here first the wards will protect you close the floo as soon as I'm gone don't answer the door for anyone unless_

Out loud, he cleared his throat, raised one hand in a little wave as he tightened his grip on the overnight bag slung over his shoulder with the other.

"Love you too. I'll see you Friday."

* * *

**Friday, April 2, 2004**

Harry shut the front door with a kick behind him on a deep sigh. He took the moment to lean his tired head back against its sturdiness as he dropped his duffel in the darkened hallway and stood there, shaking off the frantic yelling and flashbulbs that had greeted him as he entered via the front walkway. 

He'd been photographed at the portkey terminal upon landing and had made the incorrect presumption that this meant that there wouldn't be more reporters out front of the house too. The pictures of him, two-days worth of stubble, bright green eyes flashing dangerously as he contained his annoyance behind a serious, stony face would run in the papers the following morning would attest to that.

"Welcome home, master," Kreacher greeted him, his short steps accentuated for the first time by the slapping sound of shoes against the parquet floors of the entryway. Draco had convinced him not only into shoes, but also a grey set of robes. Sure, they looked like they'd been sewn from dishrags, but there was certainly craftsmanship to them.

"I'm working on it," Draco had groused, the first time Harry had remarked on them. He smiled at the memory. He'd missed Draco's ornery replies.

"Hi, Kreacher. Good to be home. Is—"

"The Malfoy-Black heir is in the sitting room," Kreacher answered, Disapparating away before Harry could inform him that the title of _heir_ would soon not apply to Draco. Instead, he pushed a wild clot of hair back from where it hung into his glasses—how'd it always grow so fucking fast?—and climbed the stairs towards the doorway lit by yellowed light, the tinny sound of pop music pouring from it.

"Draco?" He called. " _Please_ tell me there's something edible under a stasis charm, I'm starving."

"Shut. Up."

Harry opened his eyes, surprised, but for once, not the kind that would have him grabbing for his wand and ducking into a fighting position. The voice that greeted him as he crossed the threshold to the room wasn't Draco's at all, but another man. He sat across from Draco on the long sofa, the wand from a tube of mascara held aloft in one hand, his mouth hanging ajar.

"Hi darling," Draco smiled for him, putting down his drink and unfolding from the couch. He crossed over to steal Harry's lips in a kiss hello. Harry acquiesced, though his eyes never left those of the stunned man who still, through all of it, was staring right back at him.

"And, er, who's this? Here? In the house?" Draco raised his eyebrows and stepped away, silent, enjoying the spectacle far too much. "Who is—you know what, nevermind. I'm Harry Potter," he said at last, finding himself. He crossed over and held a hand out, practised smile falling into place. It was second nature to be polite, so he was, holding the handshake and giving the guy time to find his words again.

"Oh my god." He audibly swallowed, his handshake limp and damp with perspiration. "You're actually Harry Potter."

"Yeah, I am. You're in my house."

“I only had you over because you said you’d be cool,” Draco admonished as he came up behind Harry and rubbed his shoulders.

Draco’s friend continued to sit agog. Harry's smile widened. This was quickly becoming one of the more hilarious introductions he'd had with a fan in ages. He looked over his shoulder to Draco, who bit his lip playfully and shrugged, refusing to intervene or help this person who he'd clearly been conversing with before Harry arrived.

"You are Harry Potter. And I'm Draco. No, I'm not Draco, I'm Draco's friend. Because I'm Alex. Turner. I'm Alex Turner, I'm—oh my god, this is so embarrassing," he said, belatedly dropping Harry's hand and replacing the mascara wand in its tube. His eyebrows appeared missing behind a thick coat of make-up, but his eyes were fanned with the thickest, longest eyelashes Harry had ever seen on a human face. He was pretty sure that whatever he'd been planning to do with the mascara would be overkill.

"I'm so sorry, I—My mom's a huge fan of yours so this is, like, so weird."

"How so?" Harry sat in his favourite chair and began to unlace his boots, grateful to see Draco cross over to the wet bar and start to assemble something involving ice cubes and lime wedges.

"Alex is a friend from school," he said, not turning around. Harry watched him, eyes hungry for how he moved, happy to see him healthy and whole and seemingly content. So much better than the last time Harry had left for a few nights—much less smashing of things. 

"He's Muggleborn, from Canada."

"Canada's, like, a whole country," Alex scoffed. "I'm from Toronto, thank you, and my mom's totally in love with you and your, like, charity stuff. I got her your book for Christmas. She's _obsessed_. My family is sponsoring, like, half of the orphans in Ukraine or something by now."

Having recovered his composure, Alex quickly exposed himself to be quite the laugh. Built like a Weasley and with the colouring to match, he seemed like a long-lost, hyper-femme cousin of Ron's, without the freckles. Harry had interrupted the application of a full face of make-up, which Alex apparently required for his work later that evening.

"I mean, obviously you're coming out with us. You've never even been to a drag show, have you?"

Harry shook his head, lips smashed tightly. He'd hoped for a greasy bite of takeaway, a long bath, and sleep, but by the seductive lip-biting Draco kept throwing his way while Alex talked and talked, and the rosemary gin and tonic he'd pressed into his hand, Harry could tell that he was in for a different sort of night altogether.

"Well," Alex said, summoning an astonishing quantity of make-up from the open carry-on bag spilling everywhere in the centre of the room, "I'm performing at Torture Garden tonight, and I've got plus four on the list, so obviously you're coming. Blaise and Matilda too."

Harry raised a brow. "You know Blaise and Matilda?"

"Oh yeah. The four of us were besties when Draco and I were in college. The Fucking Musketeers," he said, which Draco rolled his eyes at. 

"Drop out," he muttered.

"Slag for the system," Alex shot back. "Not everyone is meant to grow up to be a company shill." He looked back over to Harry, one fingertip and one eyelid an iridescent peacock blue. 

"You haven't seen drag till you've seen Izzy Inside on the big stage." 

"Er—" was all Harry could manage to say to that, taking a sip of his drink.

Alex laughed at his lost look. "That's my drag name," he patted his hand. "You'll see."

"Shit," Draco muttered, fluttering a hand out nervously. "You've only got list of four of us? I invited Pans too. Can't we make it five?"

Just at that moment, a knock came at the front door, and Harry was sure that he'd neatly escaped the festivities.

"Well, I could—"

"Don't," Draco warned, shutting Harry right up. He took another sip of his drink and put it down. He wasn't about to chance a repeat of last weekend, but it was clear that he was _going out_ , whether he wanted to or not.

Alex scowled, luckily at Draco, rather than Harry. "No, Draco, there's no way that I, but a lowly opening act may expand my fucking guest list at the door. You know that." He looked pointedly a Draco, who was nervously biting his thumbnail until Harry frowned at him and he whipped it directly out from his mouth. Alex pointed with a tube of lipstick. 

"Remember that time I had a crush on our T.A.?"

Draco squinted. "You mean Mr Maths?" Alex nodded vehemently, taking a sideways sip of his drink through a candy cane striped straw he'd conjured. 

"What about it?"

Harry wondered at what the clear liquid fading from between the cracks of ice cubes in Alex's cup could be. From the scent on the air, he was fairly sure it was straight strawberry vodka but was a little scared to find out if he was right.

"Did you fuck him?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Yes, but—"

"I fucking _knew it_. In that case—no, _no_ , I am not listening to your excuses!—in that case, you double owe me. I will _not_ beg for a fifth guestlist spot, but I _could_ play a silly, forgetful queen and get someone in as the co-star of my act, and by co-star, I mean that they'd be collecting tips for me and _working_ the crowd for every dollar—"

"Pound," Draco auto-corrected, "they're pounds here."

Alex scoffed, took another sip of his drink that drained half the glass. "It's all money at the end of the day, who cares what it's called. I could say that there's been some mix-up and I'm a double act. That gets all five of you in."

"Who’s in drag then?" Harry asked, and the slow, sly look Alex and Draco shared, followed by explosive laughter, didn't do anything to answer the question. Alex directed his wand at his bag and out levitated a slip of something shiny—silver fabric, and very little of it.

“Urgh, I always hated you in that,” were the first words out of Pansy’s mouth when she appeared in the doorway, a bottle of sherry in one hand and a still-lit cigarette in the other. Harry twisted in his chair to make her out, Matilda and Blaise silhouetted behind her, the scents of cologne and smoke and prodigious amounts of alcohol wafting off of them.

“Only one child of every generation of the sacred twenty-eight is allowed to have legs as long as our Draco's, you know that,” Blaise drawled, pushing past her and into the room. "It's not his fault, babes. It was ordained." 

Alex scoffed at Pansy. "You think _you_ hate him in that—it's my fucking dress, and I stopped fitting in it before I even met this whore."

Harry's eyebrows catapulted to the top of his forehead at that word, _whore_ , thrown around so casually, but when it came from Alex's mouth, it seemed to glide off Draco like it was nothing.

_Interesting._

“Oi, Potter," Blaise eyed him from tip to toe. "You’re not going to try to get in with what you're wearing, are you?”

Harry looked down to the body-skimming t-shirt and black jeans he wore, then to shards of ice in his dwindling drink. He knew that he had to put his best faux-mean-girl persona on to keep up with the Slytherins. Draco grabbed the silvery slip from the air and slid it between his fingers, contemplative.

“Draco’s going in my first option, so I haven’t got much left to wear,” he answered. It was the right thing to say—Blaise snorted appreciatively, and Matilda ignored them completely, she and Alex shrieking in shared excitement at seeing one another in _oh-god-how-long-has-it-actually-been-it-can't-be_. Pansy collapsed into the seat next to Draco, wriggling free from her coat, revealing a long mesh dress, black lace underwear the only thing underneath. She'd topped it all off with black lippie and cat-eye make-up extended to the blunt line of her fringe. As per usual, she sent _fuck off_ vibes from her very pores.

"Are we actually going to try to get his holiness in the club?" She growled, avoiding Harry's eyes by staring at the lit tip of her cigarette as she said it. "Isn't he a bit of a lost cause?"

Harry got up, swallowing his annoyance. He grabbed a handful of limes to set to slicing them up, summoned a glass pitcher from the cabinet on the wall, and eyed the bottles of gin, soda, syrups and bitters on the shelves.

“This unmitigated disaster is going to Torture Garden tonight, which, to be honest, I've never fucking heard of, but it can't be worse than literal torture, so I'm sure I'll be fine." 

This was enough to get Blaise to crack a smile, teeth glowing, they were so white. "That's the spirit, Potter," he said. 

Harry snapped his fingers to set the smoke-evaporating charm that Draco was kind enough to use and Pansy hadn't bothered with to work. He noticed that the corner of Pansy's blackened pout quivered, though she'd probably die before she showed outward happiness about anything to do with Harry.

"Your bottle of sherry is looking a little low there, Pansy, so I'll get some G&T’s going in the pitcher, limes on the side if you’d like,” he gestured at the glassware he was wandlessly assembling on the countertop as he set about slicing the limes by hand, tea towel whipped over one shoulder and ice appearing in the bowl as soon as he thought about requesting it of the house. He would kill her with fucking kindness and make her like it if that's what it would take for all of them to enjoy a fun night out. 

"Looks like I'm reprising the role of sissy so all of you ingrates can come out tonight," Draco said, and cheers immediately erupted.

"Sissy?" Harry threw a handful of lime slices into a cup and turned around, wiping his hands on the tea towel. 

Alex paused his enthusiastic clapping, fingers so straight that they curled back. "Have you ever seen your boyfriend in drag?"

Harry stared directly into Draco's eyes as he shook his head slowly no.

"It's Cissy, with a c," Draco said. He stood, taking the silver thing with him. "I used to take her out to torment boys with, sometimes."

"Oh, this is going to be _fun_ ," Matilda grinned. "Just like old times."

"Latex gloves?" Draco asked. A chorus of _yes_ went up from the crowd, and Draco nodded, decisions being made in his mind.

"Alright. I'm going to have to shave everything," he frowned down at his body with a pronounced _harrumph_. Harry swallowed thickly. What, dared he dream, could _everything_ include?

"You don't _have_ to do anything you don't want to," Alex said, working on painting an extra half-inch of ruby red paint onto and around his lips.

"No, but I like it. It's fun to feel like a slippery seal, every once in a blue moon."

Alex nodded sagely, adding to the lip liner. No one else seemed to think that he was doing _a bit much_ when it came to application, so Harry turned back to his work, kept his head down. He could smile, and keep his mouth shut, hold Draco's hand, and make it through the night like he wasn't still

_ugh_

horribly, terribly, cringe-ingly, new.

"There's lasagne under a stasis charm for you in the kitchen. Just ask and Kreacher will bring it up to you."

Draco's voice, so suddenly at his ear was what made Harry realize that his shoulders were bunched up as though magnetized to his earlobes. He dropped them, accepted the hug from the back Draco bestowed on him, glad to hear his assembled friends amusing themselves across the room as he took a stabilizing moment to breathe.

"Thanks, I'm starving."

"I know. Save me a bite—I could hardly eat, with you away." He pressed a kiss to Harry's neck, just behind his ear and whispered, "I'm glad you're home."

"Me too," he whispered back. "Will you please tell me where in the fuck we're going and what in the fuck I have to wear to get in so I don't have to ask the hyenas?"

Draco pulled away, crushing a smile by biting his lower lip into his mouth. "Yeah. I'll leave some options out for you on the bed. It's a fetish club, but the people are nice. It's friendly." He looked down, demure, then over, casting a nearly undetectable _Muffliato_.

"I think I'm going to go full fish," he said. At Harry's silent, questioning look, he clarified. "Femme, you know? Pass for a girl?"

Harry remembered hushed conversations and lipstick on pillowcases. Draco searched his eyes, and for the first time, Harry swore he could feel him combing through the top layer of his thoughts, or feelings, or _something_. It was a gentle pull, not quite Legilimency, but a connection that existed when they were close, and when Harry felt open. He desperately, with every cell in his body, didn't want to say the wrong thing.

"I always was attracted to girls who were taller than me," he said, deciding to go with his gut and say the first thing that came to mind. The vision of Draco's grin soothed every frayed nerve in his body.

"Okay. You can still call me Draco if you like."

"What would you like?" Harry asked. Draco looked to his hands,

"Doesn't matter to me. I know I'm a boy. It's a just bit of fantasy for everyone else," he said. As he went to step away, Harry's whispered "Wait," stopped him in his tracks.

"It could be a bit of fantasy for you too. I could still call you the name." He closed his eyes and concentrated on the muffling spell, sure that Pansy was focused on them, likely trying to his read lips. "Could Cissy wear that thong?"

Draco raised one haughty brow. "The pink or the black?"

Harry's heart was in his throat, beating hard and fast. "Surprise me."

* * *

The problem with Draco-as-Cissy in a little handkerchief of a dress, stockings and garters borrowed from Alex, red-bottomed high heels he made a special trip home to collect, and with his hair charmed several extra inches longer so that Pansy could give it a blunt, asymmetrical bob, was that he was exactly as distressingly, lip-bitingly, excruciatingly hot feminine as he was masculine.

It was a confusing feeling to have fewer people rather than more give them a sideways glance at all as they walked to from Blaise's ridiculous Batmobile-like car to the club because Harry felt as though their intertwined fingers were some new assault on straight society, but Draco passed so thoroughly that instead, they were largely ignored. That was, except for the men who _did_ take notice of Draco, and that was because they first saw Cissy—modelesque, rail-thin, platinum blonde, like an ad for French eau de parfum and cocaine. Then they’d take in the height difference with Harry, or the richness of the laugh, but this all happened in seconds and none of them called out, or gave a double-take, so Harry didn’t know what they’d do with another few seconds on the clock.

Their group quickly found the club’s front door and strode confidently to the queue for those on the guest list, Alex their guide inside. He took Draco with him, leaving Harry with the rest, all of them unzipping jackets to reveal mesh and leather or nothing at all underneath. Matilda wore a figure-hugging dress made entirely of satin straps —“It’s Bordelle,” she’d whispered to an ogling Pansy, for whom this clearly meant something—and Blaise was shirtless, but for a leather harness that skimmed his chiselled chest and abs. Harry had inherited a mesh shirt of Draco’s, practically demure, as well as a silver chain link choker necklace. The waxed denim he’d worn to Gollybean so long ago was dusted off, and Pansy rather enthusiastically shrunk everything so it stuck to him like a second skin.

“It’s unfair that you’re so good looking,” sighed Alex when he’d made Harry do a spin. “Now, look up. A little mascara wouldn’t hurt on those peepers.”

Inside the club, the night was a whirlwind. Harry spent it watching—watching Alex transform and perform, a dancer, contorting onstage into the most beautiful shapes. Watching Draco transform too, his movements languid and sensuous, stepping expertly in stilettos as though he wore them every day. He worked the crowd for tips following Alex’s act, bending over to pinch bills that had slipped from the stage from the tacky floor below, lower back arched so his little arse pushed out against the fabric of his skirt, mouthing " _Thank you_ " to patrons who bestowed him additional bills to add to the fedora Alex gave him to collect the assorted cash in. Following his act, Alex was swept off for a chat with a burly man in leather chaps, and just like that Draco made his excuses to pull Harry away and lead him around the club, occasionally hooking a finger under the choker and tugging him in close.

“If anyone asks if you’re collared,” he whispered, “the answer is that you’re mine.”

There were many stages, rooms for engaging in a variety of kinds of "play" in, and neon bartops slick with booze. They ran into Matilda and Blaise only once—one room had trance music playing, and the two of them were there to dance, nothing more, nothing less. Harry felt like a child at the zoo, eyes and ears absorbing everything. His usual panic didn't set in, likely due to the cavernous nature of the space—high walls painted black and wide-open doorways allowing for a constant flow of bodies from one space to the next. Harry was enraptured by all of it. 

It took Draco by surprise, then, after they both stood appreciatively watching a lesbian couple performing for a small, assembled crowd when Harry took him by the hand and escorted him directly to the front doors.

"What's this? Are you alright?"

Harry walked faster, redoubling the grip on his hand. One woman had held still, knelt on the floor, while the other dripped molten hot red wax over her thighs. The woman taking the wax drippings panted out the word _Mommy_ and closed her eyes in a state of bliss that Harry recognized, and in an instant, he'd needed Draco in a way that felt immediate, desperate.

"Yeah, I'm fucking turned on is what I am," Harry growled lowly, nodding at the doorman as they emerged back into the night.

"We don't have to leave to deal with that," Draco answered, giddy, somehow keeping pace with Harry's purposeful strides as they made their way back to Blaise's car. They'd missed a bout of rain, the streets slick with it, reflecting the orange haze of street lamps and yellowed headlights of passing cars. 

"I know, but I wanted to try this." Harry waved a hand at the car and was pleased and not really surprised when the bit of magic worked, the doors unlocking in unison, no alarm sounding. He opened the back door and found that the wizarding space that Blaise had employed to drive them all to their location had dissipated in the meantime—a typical bench seat in black leather was revealed, rather than the decadent double-rowed setup they'd enjoyed earlier.

It was no matter. Harry got in, sat down and patted the space to the outside of his thigh.

"Get in here," he said, and Draco threw one glancing look around the street before he clambered on top of Harry in an indecent straddle.

"You gonna fuck me in this car?" Draco asked, hands on either side of Harry's face as Harry's roamed his back, eager to touch everything he could. Shoulders, the space of his middle back, where the deep back of the dress revealed acres of white skin, his ribcage, and lower, to where the faintest, downy hair was, that soft dip right above the cleft of his—

Sharp rapping on the car window interrupted the touching, and Harry had never known two people could disentangle as quickly or as efficiently as they did. Draco sat, eyes wide as saucers on the side of the car facing the street, leaving Harry in the hot seat, being stared down through the tinted glass of his window by a bemused looking cop.

"Fuck," Draco whispered, smoothing his skirt down over his thighs, buying him an extra few inches of fabric coverage.

Harry ran a hand distractedly through his hair and then pressed the button to roll the window down, heart hammering in his chest.

 _At least it's not fucking Blaise_.

"Aye there. You know what youse were getting up to hasn't a place on these streets now?"

Harry swallowed and nodded, squinting into the bright light of the torch the cop directed into his eyes. He brought his hand up to block some of the light from blinding him.

"Yes, sir. We were just about to stop and take it home," he tried for a self-deprecating smile.

"You do that. I'm sure this lass has a mother that wouldn't like to learn how she came to get a ticket for lewdness in public now, would she?"

Draco managed to cover his face with his hands and stifle the explosion of laughter sure to leak out of him any moment. The beam of light cut from Harry over to him and Harry extended a hand to rub at his shoulder, looking back to the cop and leaning once more into his line of sight.

"Too right. I think she's embarrassed—cries over nothing, this one."

"Birds," the cop said with a chuckle, finally halting the light. Harry shrugged and only let out a breath of relief as he finally walked away with a warning that he'd be back in 10 and the car had better be gone or empty when he came back. Draco's violent shaking let loose in hysterical laughter, so much so that he had to crawl into the front seat to flip down the mirror and set his makeup straight once he was done.

"So, now what?" He turned around in the passenger seat to ask Harry, cheeks still tinged pink, hair gently tousled from where Harry had mussed it during their brief bout of making out.

"That, inside. Everything, everyone, everywhere, doing whatever. It makes me want to—" He had to stop, close his eyes, remember to breathe. 

_Think, clearly. Use your words._

"Remember when you said we could experiment?"

Draco nodded slowly. He didn't know that Harry could see his grip on the headrest tighten—this talk excited him too.

"Well, I think I want to. It's just that I want to do it with you. No one else."

Draco nodded again, licked just the inner ridge of his lips, freshly glossed. They tasted like pixie dust candy and crushed rose petals in Harry's mouth. "Okay. What do you have in mind, pet?"

"I want to make other people jealous," Harry said. It popped out of him, a whole truth, something he didn't have to think about to say. He _felt_ it; it was the driving force that had made him drag Draco outside in the first place. Harry swallowed thickly, a scenario playing out in his head that made his palms sweat.

 _Look_ , he said, loudly enough that Draco heard him. He pushed into Harry's mind and as the image formed, a sly look stole over his face. 

"I want to show them that I'm yours," Harry said, “Cissy’s,” he added, quieter this time.

"You want to do that with me inside?" Draco tilted his head in the direction of the club, and Harry found himself nodding.

"You're in charge," he said, and Draco rolled his eyes and turned, stepping out of the car and slamming the door. He stood in the cool spring air, stood straight as a pin and without a shiver, as though the elements couldn't sway him.

"You forget, pet. I'm _always_ in charge," he smirked, leading Harry back towards the bright lights and booming bass.

* * *

Down in the basement, Harry touched the body before him like it was wholly new to him.

Each one of Cissy's careful breaths echoed in his ears. It was a trip to look up into that face he knew better than his own, the almost-not-quite of it. The irises brighter, eerier for the smudged kohl of cat-eye makeup that ringed them. Lips softer, plush suede with blush lipstick and smoothed by gloss. How with the addition of an extra few inches of gossamer threads brushing the tops of those shoulders, luminescent white, how it was easy to forget _Draco_ existed at all, because this was _Cissy_ , at least to anyone else—someone totally new. The sparkle of the pearl earring studs and sway of the hair enough to make one miss the Adam's apple, and the width of the shoulders, no matter how delicate they were.

Harry was entranced too by the silky length of rock hard cock he found inside of the underwear Cissy wore. It was a thrill, to take off what he’d first asked her to put on.

He didn't lift the hem of the dress, instead slid his right hand up into the leg opening of the underwear, palm facing out, and stroked the hard length of from under the sequinned fabric. It felt natural, that hot, thick shaft to wrap his hand around, though surprising in this new packaging. He watched as Cissy pursed her lips and made such a beautiful, soft sound.

"I can't wait for you to suck me, pet," she said, voice breathy. Harry wanted to make her gasp, to pull her apart. His mouth watered with how much he wanted it. Harry found it was good to concentrate only on that which was in front of him—Cissy—and his own body—Pet—and that was all. The room they were in melted away—they fact that anyone could pass by the open doorway and see the two of them inside. Harry on his knees, eyes half-mast behind rounds of glass in wireframes, nosing at the steadily hardening cock of Cissy. Cissy, a slim line held up by impossible heels, leaned against the cement wall, eyes the colour of frost trained only on him, below.

What Harry did concentrate on was touch. The latex of the opera-length gloves Cissy wore was smooth where it rubbed at Harry's jaw, fingertips smoothing back from his temple and into his hair. Harry smiled, gave another few pumps of his prick with his hand, gasped when Cissy tugged his head back by the roots only to stare down at him in something akin to awe. It was a look Harry recognized. Some things never changed.

"Want your cock in my mouth," Harry said, moving from sitting on his heels to standing on his knees. He gave his widest doe-eyes as he slid his hands up the outsides of Cissy's thighs, passing over the stockings to warm skin, high enough to hook thumbs into the waistband and tug the skimpy underwear down to her knees.

Pink, after all. Interesting.

Cissy's cock had been held towards her hip, barely contained by the fabric, and now it floated free, tenting the dress, making a mockery that it had ever provided any decency. Harry took her balls in his left hand and tugged, gently, guiding the head into his mouth as he closed his eyes and tongued at it.

With eyes closed, sounds amplified. Cissy _tsked_ , hissing when Harry slid down, halfway, lips meeting the top of his fist, dragging wetly back. There was shuffling behind him, and if it wasn't for the taut grip at the crown of his head, Harry would have turned to see who the feet shifting on the cement floor behind him belonged to.

No, not one pair of feet. Two—one in boots, the other in something cushioned. He could hear them both over the muted dance music pumped in through the speaker system. Tennis shoes. Trainers.

"Good boy," Cissy purred. "Don't suck off now, keep your mouth on my prick until I finish in you."

Harry moaned a response at that and sucked lower, left hand gripping her by the hipbone as he rhythmically bobbed up and down. He got a taste of salty precome, the feel of it slick at the roof of his mouth just as a gruff voice—Boots—spoke.

"That's a well-trained boy you've got there," he said, and Harry could feel every visible inch of his body blush. _He_ was that boy; this man was watching him suck Cissy’s cock as though his life depended on it. It was filth and he was hot with it, with that shame pulsing in, like stage fright but a thousand times worse—

"He is, isn't he?" Cissy responded, pulling Harry by his roots down to his natural limit and holding him there, and Harry _moaned_ to be forced to do it, eyes flickering shut. To breathe without choking; that was the trick.

Cissy gasped, finding difficulty in forming words. "He-He's the most wonderful boy in the world." A knocking sound—the back of her skull against the wall. She did it again when Harry's throat constricted around her prick on a swallow. Harry knew she was close, so, so, so close. He wanted for her to tip her chin up to the ceiling and squirt come into his mouth; Harry wanted to be the one to make her do it.

"Do you let him play with others?"

Harry concentrated on his breathing through his nose, the stretch in his jaw unbearable. Sweat erupted on his skin, his body hot and then cold with it, and when Cissy made a pained sound above him and jerked, a full body spasm, he knew then that the thrill of being watched and the tightness of his throat would be enough. He _was_ the most wonderful, was all hers, her favourite, and no one else in the world could do what Harry did to her.

He let his right hand go from around Cissy's shaft and placed it over her gloved hand, knotted tightly in his hair. Looking up, he got to witness Cissy’s eyes widen as he concentrated on opening his throat the best he could and forced himself that inch lower, spluttering without pulling free, eyelids wincing shut as he did it, and back off again.

"You should do that to me, later.” That must be Tennis Shoes speaking, the whisper-voice of a man who knew his place was under the control of someone else. Harry was flying, outside of himself, tears in his lashes and breath in such short supply, lungs burning with how much he wanted this as Cissy tipped her head back slightly and pulsed her hips, Draco's usual grunts now Cissy’s punctuated gasps. She

_fuck, fuck, fuck_

fucked Harry's throat in a way that could be called gentle, though the muscles in Harry’s jaw strained to the point that he whimpered to keep it open.

“Just— _ungh, pet_ —" Her sounds came desperately, wordless pleas, then the pained ones and someone was at the wall on the periphery, wet sounds as they rubbed one out to the two of them, Harry’s vision blurred, wet, and Boots said something that Harry couldn’t parse as Cissy pulled him so low that Harry pulled back but not off, gagging, a long line of spit connecting his mouth to her cock. Draco would have announced that he was coming but Cissy didn't bother warning Harry when a jolt went through her body and the first jet of come erupted just inside his mouth. She held his head still and pulled at the base of her cock, slick and pink, jerking it, the slippery rubber of the glove the only sound Harry could hear other than her sated moans as she came and came and came on his open, waiting lips, and cheeks, and nose.

"Oh pet," Cissy panted, let go of his hair and patted it down. When Harry opened his eyes again, the coughing over, and looked up at her, it was up and into a gaze of absolute worship. He was lightheaded, had to close his eyes and rest his brow on a slip of that wonderful, smooth white skin of thigh revealed above the sheer perfection of tights held high by satin garters. 

"What a perfect pet, absolutely perfect. Look at me."

Harry did, grinning, wiping come from his face with the heel of a palm, the back of his hand, eyes never wavering from Cissy's.

“How’d you manage not to get any on my glasses?”

Cissy shrugged as she bit her lip, that sharp little snaggletooth, and more now than he had in the car Harry wanted to flip her around and have her. Then, there, against the wall. But the way he wanted it wasn’t for the viewing pleasure of others. At least, not tonight.

Harry used sticky hands to replace her prick, barely softened, into the sack of her underwear and to stand, tugging them back into place, replacing the dress over the whole package. He didn't turn to see who else in the space had watched, who might have come too, just took a gloved hand in his and pressed it to his own prick, hard as steel down the leg of his jeans.

“Here?” Cissy asked, and it was a thrill that she asked like she wanted it. That she’d let others see Harry have her like that. But Harry shook his head, tugged and led her by the hand up the staircase to the main room, thick with heat and out the front door, past the smoking throngs and the hungry eyes and the wolf whistles, heels crunching over stones pulled from rivers to line these jagged streets, down the block and into the alley, and that’s when he took her with an arm around the dip of her back and Apparated them to Grimmauld place, straight into the sitting room overlooking the garden.

"Here," he said, the word exactly as hoarse as he knew it'd be. With a wave of his hand the thick brocade curtains drew open, revealing long, leaded pane windows. The light of the moon was bright enough, touching skin and sparkle alike with a soft white, interrupted by the zig-zags from the thorny rose bush growing up, up towards the third floor. Harry unzipped his trousers as Cissy grabbed his face and angled him to accept her kiss, tongue probing in, taking control of his lips and mouth, owning it. They stumbled until the backs of Harry's knees hit the sofa—tufted, rigid leather, and wide enough to accomplish what he needed it to support—so he sat heavily, Cissy a tangle of limbs on top of him.

"Am I your present then?" Cissy asked, catching on quickly to what Harry wanted. Harry grabbed an arse cheek in each of his hands, marvelled at how soft they were as she pulled her wand from where she’d charmed it to the lining of her dress and whispered the spell for lube, filling her right palm with a thick gel.

"Always," Harry said, and Cissy huffed a laugh, left hand freeing his cock the prison of his jeans and pants and right following directly afterwards, coating it with perfunctory strokes.

"Cold," Harry hissed, fingernails digging into the soft flesh he'd been kneading. “Do you—prep spells?”

"Did before we left,” she answered, stealing another desperate kiss.

"You," Harry pulled away, dodging Cissy's attempts for more. "You planned for this?"

“I had a feeling." She pulled the dress up to her waist, the fabric like a waterfall, clinging to her stomach and pooling at the bulge in her pants. "Boys have always found me irresistible in this dress."

"It's been so long so we've done it this way," she added, the timbre of her voice hushed as it had been all night. When she was done coating Harry's prick she rose up on her knees and made to bring down the straps to her underwear again, but Harry stopped her with a muffled sound of disagreement.

"No," he croaked, fingers of his right hand reaching into the cleft of her arse and tugging the thong of the fabric to the side. "Keep it on."

The size of Cissy's smile made her eyes nearly shut, and then she was shaking hair from her face, pushing it up and over, resting one hand on Harry's shoulder as the wet fingers of her right reached behind and found their goal.

"Keep telling me what to do," she breathed, a quiver in her voice. Harry stared up into her face and took hold of his own cock by its base. He held on, not chancing to jerk it for fear that he'd come before it was time.

"Circle your fingers around your hole," he said. Cissy nodded, a rush of air slipping through her puffy lips. Her lipstick was gone and still, she looked perfect, absolutely perfect to Harry.

Harry swallowed. "Slip one in and tell me how it feels," he said. He licked parched lips, wishing for all for the world for a glass of water.

Cissy's brow fell to his as she bent further forwards, finding the right angle for it. Harry twisted his head and she nipped at the top of his earlobe.

"Why must you always bite me," Harry whispered.

"Habit," she said, then gasped stilling. "My hole, it's," she whispered, drawing the words out so slowly that it was agony for Harry to hear them, "hot."

"Twist it in, all the way," Harry directed, the need to fuck Cissy open building in him like anxiety, agitation skyrocketing. He tugged at his cock twice experimentally and stopped, the feeling radiating outwards like a shimmer in his veins.

"Can't we just try?" Cissy asked. Harry shook his head, and it was Cissy's turn to whine for once.

"Not till you're ready," he said. "Want me to check if you can take more?"

She nodded and Harry gave her an even look, gliding his middle and ring fingers over from where they'd been holding elastic back and towards Cissy's hole, the skin all strangely smooth, hairless, and her hole now slippery wet, full with her own middle finger.

"Don’t move," Harry spoke into the dip of her neck and shoulder. He had to let go of his own prick to hold her still, hand a wet anchor at her waist. Cissy flinched when their fingers touched, Harry's dipping just inside, turning one to three, and it was Harry's turn to chuckle.

"And you thought I could just fuck you after one finger." He carefully withdrew both of his own as Cissy panted above him. 

"We'll go slow." He was good to his word and pressed, slowly, lost in wonder as he slid one finger back into the tightness already squeezing around one of Cissy's.

“Ah,” she gasped, the ring of muscle closing, squeezing like a vice around the intrusions.

“Too much?” Harry asked. Gossamer strands shook in his face.

“No," she breathed out, in. "Just, full.”

"Take yours out now," he whispered, and Cissy obediently did. She was shaky now, cock filling out again, a thick bulge, wet spot growing.

"How," Cissy gasped as Harry dragged two fingers into and out from her, "how do I feel?"

"Flawless," Harry answered. He removed them to spit on them and tried again, kept at it as a rain kicked up, distant thunder quaking the house. When he bumped a third against the rim Cissy tensed.

"Push back for me," Harry asked, and she did—slowly, pulling back after each thrust, sinking onto them until the tightness stopped her each time.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he added, and that got her to finally relax and accept the stretch. The little sounds started, whenever he got knuckle deep. Harry wished he could watch, properly, but the show from the front was truly enough.

" _Accio_ us a glass of water," Harry said. Cissy was rocking up and down on his fingers now, and soon she'd be begging, and the last thing Harry wanted to think about while fucking her was how thirsty he was.

Cissy fumbled around, blindly reaching until her wand rolled towards them and knocked into the backs of her knuckles.

" _Ac—_ " she started, and Harry curled his fingers up against the ball of nerves seated inside of her, pressed and held them there, taking delight in the look of pain that was really pleasure contorting her face.

"Come on now, we haven't all night," he teased, releasing his grip. Cissy panted breaths, tried again.

" _Accio—_ "

Harry did it again, laughed at how she lost the ability to speak, a low growl emitting as the hand gripping at Harry's shoulder dug in uncomfortably.

"Jesus _fuck_ Potter—"

"Oh, it's Potter now is it—"

 _"Accio_ cup," Cissy ground out, reaching back to pull Harry's fingers free from her body. The cup whizzed into the room at a speed heretofore unknown, and she quickly cast _Aguamenti_ , took a gulp and held it out between them.

"Have this if that means that you'll fuck me properly, for god's sake," she ground out. Her cheeks were red hot, eyes unable to keep from falling to Harry's prick, shining all over, the slit wet with milky precome.

Harry smiled up at her. It was so _nice_ to see his partner undone with want, for once, rather than it being him.

 _Enjoy it while it lasts_ , Cissy muttered in his mind, having heard his thoughts. Harry didn't mind one bit.

"Take a sip and pour it in my mouth for me, and _then_ you can bounce on my prick till I paint your insides—"

Cissy took a sip into her mouth before Harry finished the request, fingers rough at his jaw, tilting his head back so that he could accept the trickle of water into his open mouth. Ice cold, and spilling from her lips, it was divine.

Harry swallowed thickly as she lined herself up, clavicle at Harry's eye height, their torsos aligned, sequins rubbing harshly against the mesh. She threw off the stilettos to place her heels near Harry's arse, and Harry had to wrap his arms around her to keep her from falling backwards off the couch.

He hadn't counted on it being this intimate. Facing one another as Cissy's features screwed up with concentration and want and then the discomfort of bearing down, bearing so much, measured breaths to take the rough slide and stretch of Harry's cock into her body. One spaghetti strap fell, revealing a pink nipple at just the right height for Harry to lean in and capture the nub between his teeth, flicking it hard with his tongue. 

"Fuck," Cissy whispered, "god that's good, you feel— _fuck_ —"

Their hands tightened in time wherever they'd grabbed on to each other, breaths catching and held until Cissy settled, finally, settled onto Harry's lap.

Her fingers uncurled as her eyes closed, sips of air in interrupted by little gasps at the slightest movement from Harry. Harry couldn't help but lean in for a demure kiss, following the cues of her breath to set a gentle rocking motion. Harry thrust his hips that tiny bit up, forcing Cissy's hips to open for him, wide, wider.

"You asked for—" she panted, reaching for the back of the sofa on either side of Harry's head. Holding there she could slide up and down, riding his shaft while bent in half in a ridiculous squat, of the sort only those with both the stamina and flexibility to do so could maintain.

"Bouncing. Yeah, I know," Harry smiled up at her, a fluttering, electric feeling building inside of him. He was close, really, brutally close, and still, he hadn't been the one to fuck Cissy, not the way he needed to.

"Hold still just like that, and let me do the work," he asked, and Cissy acquiesced. When Harry held her by the ribs and pounded his hips upwards, the broken sound she yelped made his cock throb. He lived for the feeling of being all inside of her, hot and wet and so unbelievably tight. He did it again, equally hard and Cissy cried out once more but tried to hide the sound in her throat. 

"Don't do that," Harry said, circling his hips with Cissy at the bottom, sac resting against Harry’s skin. Her cock remained tucked away, semi-hard in her underwear, though she made no intimation of wanting to be touched there again. This moment was about Harry’s control for a moment, about the pleasure they could share that came just from this—bottoming with abandon.

"When my boyfriend fucks me, he makes the most delicious sounds. Be loud. Let it all go," he ground out, slamming his hips up again and again. In this way, he pulled ragged breaths and moaning without end from Cissy's body until she was indeed bouncing on Harry's prick, skin loudly slapping. Harry’s toes bunched up with the effort of pushing his feet into the floor, fucking up into her until she screamed. It was a sound that couldn't be hidden even by rain and wind and thunder, and the primal nature of it cut the string of whatever was holding Harry on this side of his orgasm as he came suddenly, grip tightening on Cissy's body as he held her still.

"Oh," Cissy breathed, feeling it happen inside of her, mouth a little circle of wonder. Harry heaved a breath and his hips took over, pumping again, slower, the slide wetter with each drag of Cissy nearly off him and then the gasp, the convulsion, the final tremors running through him as they slowed down to a standstill.

Harry smoothed the bits of hair that had caught in Cissy's open mouth away for her, chests puffing, caving in, round and round.

Cissy slipped up and off of him with a hiss and lay on the sofa, forehead twisted in a frown even as her lips curled with a lazy smile. She clenched her legs together, holding her hips up and then slowly lowering them down to rest.

"That's going to smart tomorrow," she said. Harry rolled his head to look over at the long line of her, like a bit of tinsel made human, laid out as she was.

"Did I hurt you?" Harry asked. He wasn't really too worried—he was sure that Cissy would have told him, and wouldn't be smiling that way if he had. At least Draco had a salve for that, one Harry was all too aware of.

"Not really. Not more than being fucked till it felt like I was being split in two could do," she waved it off. "Sometimes I forget about the next day soreness, you know? But I love it—I think it's delightful."

"Deviant," Harry said.

"Freak," Cissy said, then yawned, arms out long and spindly above her head. "Time for bed for us debauched weirdos, wouldn't you think?"

"Sure feels like it," Harry closed his eyes and was overtaken by a yawn. The spunk and lube were fast-drying on his prick and stomach, and he knew that a shower would be the only thing to rid him of the oily feeling completely. "Care to join me for a shower before bed?"

"Mmm," Cissy hummed, one hand reaching down to twine fingers with his. "Time for my disappearing act."

"How's that?" Harry cracked an eyelid, saw that Cissy lay with her eyes closed, a look of blissful satiation on her face.

"Once this dress comes off, this princess vanishes."

"How do I summon her back?"

Cissy smiled wickedly and rose slowly on her forearms to look Harry in the eye. The dress was a joke now, permanently slipped down to expose one pink nipple and the ghost of ribs underneath it. 

"She's known to appear whenever a grotesquely short and very expensive dress is made available to her. Friday nights, mostly."

"Got it. Well, I'd love to say goodbye to her before my boyfriend comes home and finds us like this. He's known to be quite possessive."

They unfurled from the couch and shuffled towards the stairs, shoes hanging from fingertips, hair in disarray.

It was Cissy's turn to yawn.

"Let's get you all cleaned up for your prince charming, then."

* * *

**Notes** : Phew! Basically fluff, eh? I hope this buoys your spirits. 

Chapter title from The Knife's "Pass This On", the OST to writing this chapter. I love that the song is of the era of this fic (released 2003) and the music video features Rickard Engfors in drag, lip-synching to the song, every bit as pretty as I envision Draco to be in drag.

I've never been to Torture Garden. Fingers crossed that in a post-COVID world, I get the chance :)

Next chapter up by Friday, February 26. Thanks, as always, for reading, kudos and comments xx 


	22. Tender is the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dawn to dusk to dawn again.

* * *

**Sunday, April 4, 2004**

Harry would never get over the feeling of waking up to another body behind his. It was too good to be true—shins available to warm perpetually cold feet against. To turn and take in the face that left him breathless—hair so light that gentle breath fanned it up and off the milk-white skin of his brow, smooth in sleep. The slightly aquiline nose, eyelids framed by fans made of translucent thread. Scars, four, he knew, now that he'd had so much time to look. The fishhook above the cupid’s bow, a scratch slicing through one eyebrow, a tiny crater left behind by childhood Dragonpox, and a horizontal line on his left cheekbone—the same place Harry had one. All the fine bone work made up an austere face, and those lips, those fucking lips, pursed to form words while dreaming. Harry got a thrill from watching Draco sleep, mining for sense in the things he sometimes whispered, forehead wrinkled by worry, fingers gripping at something just out of reach.

The other thing he hoped to never tire of was waking to the press of another body against his, slotted in to fill in all his cracks. Hot breath on his throat while a nose nudged at his earlobe. Greedy fingers sneaking around his stomach to draw him closer. A strong thigh slung over his own, legs holding him in place as he woke, slowly, to the feeling of Draco Malfoy waking up wanting him first thing.

"Good morning," Draco purred the words into is skin. Harry hadn't even opened his eyes yet, and Draco was undulating gently but deliberately behind him, cock half-hard against the small of Harry's back.

Draco made a sound and nudged him forwards, onto his belly. The sounds of birds joyously announcing the break of day filtered in to the room. They'd taken to sleeping with the windows open a crack, and Harry smiled to smell the fresh scents of spring on the air. 

"Smells like rain," he mumbled, the neurons in his brain firing something to say. Draco made a sound of acknowledgement. His hand trailed through the wiry hair in the centre of Harry’s chest until it found a nipple to roll between its fingertips. Harry closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation until the sensation turned to a pinch and he bucked back angrily. 

"Sorry," Draco whispered.

"You're always sorry, and yet somehow, that hand always comes ba— _ah_ —"

His grumbling cut off as Draco's other hand, also greedy, trailed down the ridges of Harry's stomach to touch the soft hair of his thighs. The heel of his palm brushed Harry's cock as it fattened for him. Harry stammered as Draco smiled indulgently into his neck.

"I really am sorry," Draco continued lazy circles around the nipple and slid his other hand purposefully back over Harry’s shaft, pulling the foreskin up over the head and then stretching it down. Harry opened sleepy eyes and tossed the blankets back so they could both watch him do it, the swollen red head of his prick revealed on the downstroke.

“I am sorry, pet,” Draco squeezed him closer, nipping at his neck. "How ever can I make it up to you?"

Something that Harry could get used to were these little games. Draco asked the questions because he liked to hear the answers. He was already pressing Harry fully onto his stomach, remaining propped above him perched on his elbow. He caught him by the jaw, scratching at a fresh bit of blackened stubble with his thumbnail. They were so close that their breaths were one, the kiss that they both wanted just out of Harry’s reach. 

"You're such a wanker," Harry whispered, but there was no bite to his words. He opened his mouth and closed his eyes and Draco kissed him slowly, all careful tongue and indulgent sounds low in his throat. It made his heart hurt, the way Draco kissed him when they were alone.

"Come on," Draco said. Harry kept his eyes closed as Draco kissed his cheeks and the tip of his nose, even his eyelids.

Harry grinned. "And you call _me_ needy."

Draco wouldn’t beg, but he wasn’t above teasing. “Tell me and I’ll make your dreams come true,” he said as his hand, the wanderer, started up again. Fingertips traced the knobs of Harry's spine until he gulped when they took a handful of the soft flesh of his right arse-cheek and squeezed, then smacked it with a resounding slap. 

"Tell me what you want. I know you want to."

Another thing Harry was accustomed to now—feeling the ridges of the Dark Mark on Draco's forearm while his hands slid over his body. He felt angry about how it got there, but little about the thing itself—it had become nothing more than an unsightly tattoo. A reminder that the past remained with them in the present. 

"Fuck me like this," Harry said, the words coming awkwardly with his face pressed sideways into a pillow. He rolled his hips to slide his cock on the sheets below him, aching for more _something._

"You need it, don't you?" Draco got properly on top, his cock hot and hard against the squishy flesh beneath him. Harry threw the pillow aside and rested instead of on his folded forearms, gaze trained on the vision in the mirrored headboard. Draco caught his eyes in the mirror as he reared up, the strong muscles across his core and side rippling as he lifted onto one elbow. He raised an eyebrow and spat into his free hand, coating the head of his cock with it before directing it very deliberately down past the pucker hidden between Harry’s arse cheeks, then up, then back down again.

Harry gasped and arched to press into the feeling. They'd fucked last night and he could feel the dull ache it had left behind inside his body, and more thoroughly in the stretched tendons of his hips, which Draco had held wide-open, gripping at the backs of Harry’s knees, watching him come undone in a writhing mess below him. Harry was sure that they could go again, though he’d be sitting gingerly for it. 

"I do need it," he said, watching the look of rapt attention the Draco in the mirror gave the task of teasing his hole. Harry smirked; he'd left a string of blackberry-coloured lovebites along the right side of Draco's neck—a keepsake just the same as sore muscles and stretched tendons were. 

"I need you," he let a naked want colour his words. He knew how Draco liked it. "Make it so I feel you all day."

"Get the lube," Draco murmured. He lowered to nibble at Harry's ear as he wandlessly _Accio'_ d the bottle and passed it obediently to him, amused at how distracted Draco became by the flexing muscles of his back. Draco flicked the lid open with his thumbnail and poured a stream of it directly onto his prick. Clicking it shut he tossed the bottle, not caring for what the lube would do to the sheets. His jaw clenched in concentration as he spread it with a few efficient strokes over the dark pink length of his erection before moving to finger Harry. He didn’t meet Harry’s eyes in the mirror anymore, focussed completely on his task. 

"No," Harry said suddenly, and Draco paused. 

"No?" He swirled a fingertip instead around his entrance. Harry closed his eyes and controlled the groan from growing in his throat, wishing for the pillow back to bite at.

"You could fuck me just like this," Harry gasped, the fingertip still pressing slow circles around the rim. 

Draco raised an eyebrow. "I could do a lot of things," he said, and Harry knew how this would go. The scenario was eerily similar to the porn he'd last watched, and as that thought flicked through his mind a knowing smile grew on Draco's face.

"You left the tab open," he said by way of explanation, dipping the first digit inside Harry. He groaned, wanting the whole finger badly, but more than that, so much more than that. He blushed too, a silly thing. It was an automatic reaction for being caught out for wanking, though he knew that Draco of all people found it both hot and natural that he'd still do that too, no matter how often they fucked.

"If you watched it, then would you fuck me like that?” Draco pulsed the finger, humming as he considered giving Harry what he wanted. “Please,” Harry added, and at that word, the finger stilled. "Please," he breathed again, and all of a sudden there was the pressure of the spongy head of Draco’s cock and his words, “Deep breath, pet, and hold it.” Harry did as he was told as Draco pushed, and every ounce of breath in Harry's body punched out of him. He was a little surprised at the fierce suddenness and the sharpness of the stretch. The sensation shocked him, tensed every available muscle in his body into rock. 

"Shh," Draco whispered into his shoulder. “Breathe. Little sips.” 

They held still as Harry's body grew accustomed to the intrusion. The suddenness was part of the point; he could feel the length of Draco's prick like a weight deep inside his belly, and his instinct was to revolt against the girth, but instead, he held still and did as he was told. 

_It’s good this way, he makes it good if you’re good._

"Are you going to call me Daddy like they did in it too?" Draco held still but Harry couldn't any longer, scooping his back and rolling his hips to force him in deeper, a panted breath stolen from him to do it. He felt so _full_ , every other feeling in his body subservient to this one. It seemed impossible that he'd come this far since they’d first started up; could take Draco's whole fat prick into his body in short minutes.

"I could," Harry breathed, and Draco pulled back a little and pressed hard inside, the slide rough and delicious. They both moaned and Harry dipped his head to the mattress to take a deep breath before Draco did it again. He used his elbows to find leverage, fingers pressed against the cool glass of the mirror as Draco fucked him properly, short, strong thrusts punctuated by Harry’s sounds.

Draco widened his knees, spreading Harry's thighs apart as he rose up, balanced on his hands pressing divots into the bed on either side of Harry's ribs.

"Do it," Draco said. It had the hint of snideness that sold it as more than an act. Harry couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to realize which parts of Draco’s personality he found erotic rather than aggravating. He stopped while fully seated inside of Harry and circled his hips instead. "Say it. Call me Daddy."

"Daddy," the word came out so quiet and breathy, and Harry's cock unexpectedly jerked as he said it. It felt like he'd unlocked some new, weird sort of depravity—people in porn said it all the time, women and men, and he'd thought it weird. _Daddy issues,_ he told himself.

"Say it—say it nicely, pet," Draco said. His voice was shaky, and when Harry dared to look up he realized just how gone Draco was in this scenario. He was flushed, sweat on his brow and high on his cheeks, nipples hardened pink dots on his chest.

"Please, Daddy," Harry said, louder, though his voice shook, “fuck me.” The words made Draco's eyes flutter shut. His nostrils flared, a huff of hot breath before he thrust savagely into Harry.

 _That's more like it_ , Harry thought.

" _Fuck_ —"

Draco pulled him up to his hands and knees, a hand on one hip and the other reaching around to stroke Harry's neglected prick.

“Louder,” Draco urged him on. Harry’s head hung heavily, and he noted the darkened spot where he’d leaked into the sheets. He made an incomprehensible sound and shuddered when Draco's fist found that wetness at the slit and spread it around.

"Please— _yes—_ fuck me how you like—"

The slapping of their bodies was obscene, fast and wet, skin meeting skin with abandon, and Harry let himself be absolutely lost in it.

"Feels good, pet?" Draco let go of his cock to hold Harry fast by his hips, control all but lost.

"Feels—so—good," Harry could barely speak; he'd never been fucked like this.

"Use me," he panted out, wanting to drop his head and shoulders down so that the angle up to where they were connected would change, would feel amazing, but just then Draco's right hand reached out and took hold of him by a clump of his hair, jerking his head back, and the surprise of it caused him to clench all the little muscles inside around his cock, and Harry could see how that spelt the end of things for Draco.

"Fill me, Daddy," Harry choked on the words and Draco bit his lip so hard it looked liable to bleed, eyes squeezed shut as he trembled, coming deep inside of Harry. His thrusts became more languid, each push back in announced with a groan, and still, his grips on Harry's hip and hair didn't loosen a bit. Harry held himself as still as he could and took it, close in his own right but mesmerized to see the colour and tension drain from Draco's face and body as he emptied himself into his body.

Before his panting breaths had slowed, Draco loosed his grip on Harry's hair and pulled himself free.

"Flip over," he said, voice a low growl.

Harry did, flopping onto his back. His own cock remained dusky and so hard that it slapped flat against his belly.

"I'll never get used to this, as long as I live," Draco said, settling back on his haunches for a second's breath.

Harry took himself in hand, neck arching immediately at the tingly, wonderful feeling that simple touch brought.

"What?" He blinked up at Draco, watching him touch himself, his mouth a little slack, his gaze full of wonder.

"You, like this. I love doing this with you."

Harry closed his eyes, basking in the warm glow of Draco's praise. It made him heady and weak, and he wanted more of it, before the sweat collecting in the crooks of his body cooled.

"You're so good," Draco said. He knocked Harry's fist out of the way and replaced it with his own, ducking down to plant a kiss at the base of his cock. "You're so perfect, and Daddy's very proud of you for taking his cock like that."

Draco chose that moment to thrust three fingers into the hot, wet mess of Harry's arse, thumb pushing into the soft skin under his tight sac, balls pulled in tight to his body. He swallowed Harry's cock into his mouth, eyes rolling back and shut as he did it and it was all Harry could do to make a broken, needy sound and land a shaking hand on the back of his head. His hand followed Draco's movements rather than the other way around, and it could have been two bobs or twenty but soon, so soon, the everything of the moment built and Harry came, thighs quivering as Draco's ears brushed them. He loved being able to feel the heat of his come flooding Draco's mouth and the pressure as he sucked and swallowed it all down, moving forwards with him as Harry scooted up the bed, trying to escape the overwhelming rush of feelings that made up his orgasm. Draco never let him escape the rush, sucking him until he had nothing left to give.

Draco finished with gentle licks, replacing Harry's softening cock on his belly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"So it's Daddy now, is it?" His eyes sparkled with mischievousness.

Harry laughed and tugged him down to lay against his side as their breaths came evenly once more.

"Maybe. Sometimes. Is that alright?"

Draco took a deep breath and shut his eyes against the morning sunlight that had crept up on them when they weren't paying attention.

"Everything's alright with me. Everything, at just this moment, seems grand."

* * *

"Isn't picking a date the easy part?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"You'd think so, but at this point, I don't see how we're going to be able to settle on anything before 2006."

"That's only because you're trying to take into account literally everything," Ron said. He counted on his fingers, "Global wind patterns, whether or not Victoire will have to miss any school, the birthing season of dragons, as per Charlie's notes—"

"I'm trying to be _considerate_ ," she countered.

Draco gave a knowing look to Harry as he passed by the doorway to the living room, one shared in confidence because Hermione and Ron's backs were to him and therefore they weren't treated to the raised brows and smirking lips. Harry was, and knew from the _I told you so_ inherent to the look that Draco wouldn't be any help at all in extricating him from the conversation.

 _Please, help me_ , he thought. Draco squished his lips together in a thin line and with a shake of his head walked on, out of sight. He'd been hooked into playing some version of miniaturized Quodpot with Teddy and Victoire, which suddenly seemed like a very appetizing option in comparison to the quagmire of issues talking about the upcoming wedding had so far incurred. Bill's rich laugh mingled with the delighted shrieks of the children after most of the bigger explosion sounds, which Harry took to mean that the match was going well, all around.

Harry sighed and sipped his tea. If he finished it quickly enough he could escape on the pretence of fetching more, and change the subject when he got back.

"Anyway, don't let us bore you with wedding shite. Once we pick a date, you'll be pulled in on all sorts of stuff.” Ron absently itched at the scars that roped up his arm, sleeves rolled to his elbows as he fixed Harry with a serious look.

"Am I?"

"Oh yeah," he replied. "You've no idea how glad the boys are that I didn't pick any of them for best man. Bill and Charlie have each had to do it five times. _Five_.” He shook his head. “Fucking nightmare."

Harry shrugged. "Can't be all bad. Stag do, don't forget the rings."

Ron scoffed. "Speeches, wrangling drunk uncles. Cold feet."

Hermione snorted into her glass of wine. "Cold feet," she said. She and Ron shared a knowing smile—they'd been committed to one another already for a quarter of their lives and hadn't ever faltered in their shared belief that they would continue in that vein till death did them part. Where Envy used to flare up, uninvited and bitter, Harry now had his own warm, wriggly feelings of forever to deal with. Marriage was a lost option to him—he'd known that he couldn't entrap Ginny into a false union, and it truly wasn't an option now that he was out and older, and legally couldn't.

But still. That didn't have to stop him from his own version of forever.

"What's new with you?" Ron asked, the scratching intensifying until Hermione batted his hand away. Ron grumbled but obediently unfolded the sleeves to his shirt and worked to button the cuffs. "We've hardly seen you these last couple of weeks."

Harry sighed. Where to begin?

"Just busy, I guess. But good, busy, you know?"

Hermione nodded for him to continue as the sound of a particularly loud explosion followed by what was distinctly Draco's laugh sounded from the next room. They all looked at one another, as though one of them should _maybe_ go check on what was going on, but just then Percy zoomed past, mumbling under his breath.

"That's likely enough of that for the day," he announced before his voice was lost to the din of groans down the hallway.

Harry couldn't help his wide-eyed surprise. "Percy? Really?"

"Yeah," Ron heaved a sigh. "He came yesterday for the vigil. Staying the week. Mum's thrilled; Dad can hardly string two words together to say to him. And he's still, well, you know. Percy."

Harry covered for the stab to the heart that the word _vigil_ thrust through him. It was a blood-family only affair each year, not on the anniversary of Fred's death but rather on his shared birthday with George. The Weasley's held a vigil and spent the day together, reminiscing on the good memories and purging themselves of the sadness that came along with his loss. It was as much George’s day as it was Fred’s so there was also some frivolity, and always, so much of Molly’s cake.

Neville, Hermione, and Harry had never been invited along, so Harry also felt the grim squeeze of Guilt. They’d never made a fuss over not being involved in the tradition, so Harry assumed that they were better-adjusted people than he was, and naturally didn’t want to be. He couldn't help but want to feel like he was _really_ part of the Weasley family, but also knew that there were things he'd never really understand. Fred hadn't been his brother; they hadn’t grown up together. He'd never know the tint of grief the Weasley's felt, but at least he felt like he was getting closer to letting go of the wish to be included in an impossible way.

 _You could make your own family,_ he thought uncharitably, _instead of glomming on to others._

"How's George?" Harry asked. Ron _tsked_ , waved a hand.

"Fine." He shrugged, "Or shit, depending on the day." He shifted forwards in his seat to peer at the door, wary of being overheard. Harry and Hermione leaned in closer as he pitched his voice low. "Spent a lot of yesterday making jokes through dinner, playing up that it's all fine, you know? On and on about how business is good, but Angelina's been staying with her mum for who knows how long. Then dad brings up the wedding plans, and he starts going off."

"About what?"

Ron looked away, down to the shag carpet underfoot. Hermione was the one to answer.

"About you, and Draco." Before Harry could ask why she shushed him. "He's conflicted. You're a big part of why he has what he has, but things aren't um, _shiny_ as all that right now. With you and Draco in the news all the time, happy, you know— _moving on_ —I think it's rubbing him the wrong way."

"He's lashing out, saying stuff—" Ron swallowed hard, staring at the far wall.

"What stuff?" Harry asked, the cold feeling in his stomach spreading. It was morphing, anger licking at his insides. _What stuff?_ If he could say it to Ron, he should have the guff to say it to Harry's face. He didn't need people he thought of as friends going around, slighting his relationships and the life he fought to build behind his back.

"Mate, I don't want to go down that road right now. I think he's staying for dinner tonight, and he knows better than to go on about it. Ignore him, will you?"

Harry nodded reluctantly. He hated this distance from George—they'd never been particularly close, but this lowly simmering feud building between them felt one-sided and wholly unfair.

Ron was eager to change the subject, clearing his throat and settling back in his seat. "What's new with you, really?"

Harry shrugged. "The usual. Looks like we're really going to open the school this summer."

"Picked a date, yet?" Hermione asked. Harry gave his most deadpan stare at her smug smile.

"Actually, _yes_ , we have, Ms Can't-Commit. Aiming for the second of August—gives us some wiggle room to have most of McGonagall's attention before Hogwarts requires all of it. It's going to be tight to get everything together—I've got to get some certifications myself, the summer's going to be crazy but—good. It's all good," he nodded, mind wandering over how what had once been a side project was shaping up to be the thing that gave his life shape and form. Purpose.

"Think you might join in the Victory Day stuff?" Ron asked. He avoided Harry's eyes, elaborating, "I got word that the Ministry's going to turn it into a bank holiday this year. I'll be, uh, making the announcement, actually," he sniffed, and Harry realized that he was embarrassed by receiving the honour. If Harry had still been on the force it would be given to him, full stop, but with him gone, Ron's star was clearly shining a little brighter.

"Oh, um. I wasn't planning—that's great, Ron, that's awesome—"

Ron shrugged the congratulations off, though Harry knew it meant a lot to him to be recognized for his efforts. Hermione didn't bother hiding her pride and fairly beamed.

"But yeah, I don't know—" Harry sighed deeply, trying to find the words.

"The day's important but I've always hated everyone turning to me like it's my day, you know? When it's for everybody. _I_ didn't win the war."

"Somebody ought to tell the Prophet," Draco drawled as he loped into the room and collapsed into the sofa next to Harry. He smelled faintly of accelerants and smoke, the ghosts of fires clinging to his clothes. "Here I thought I was dating a war hero, and instead I've bought into the tales of an _imposter_."

Harry finished his tea, everyone remaining quiet. He hadn't considered how awkward it would be to think deeply about that day. About where Draco had stood, and what he'd did. What the rest of them had done, had to do, to defend a way of life worth living for those who would come after them.

Harry broke the silence before it could get too awkward.

"I wish I could disappear on Victory Day, but everyone wants me to be there so when the speeches end they know who to turn to while they're clapping." He played with the dregs in his cup, grains of tea-leaves mucking up the bottom of the mug. When he looked up, Draco was staring at him. "What do you do for it?"

His expression didn't change at all. "I used to try to forget, which meant a whole lot of anything I could get my hands on." He stroked the back of his burned hand absent-mindedly. "Lately, I book the studio and try to work the feelings out. Run a hot bath. Try for some quiet contemplation."

"I can't imagine doing the day sober," Hermione muttered, eyeing the dwindling supply of wine in her glass. Ron huffed and she startled, shocked that she said it aloud.

Draco clasped his hands together and sighed, staring at them. "To be serious, I try to remember the dead. There are people I wish I'd had a chance to apologize to, or thank." The trio shared a questioning look— _Thank? Who?—_ but then Draco snapped back to himself.

"I spend a lot of it trying to be mindful and thankful to you all for saving me, without letting it get too maudlin." He cleared his throat, an unexpected bout of emotion having clogged it.

"Twice," Ron said. Harry glanced at him, noticed the twitch of a smile tugging on his cheek. "We saved your life twice."

"Dinner's ready!" Molly's shout was answered by near-instantaneous stampeding of little feet, eager to try to claim seats at the table that weren't theirs to have.

Teddy's stopped at the door, hair once again glowing the pink reminiscent of Draco's earlier phase, and Harry's eyes flooded unbidden. _Teddy_ , perfect, wonderful child that he was, orphaned that very day. So many fucking dead—Remus and Nymphadora, but others too, like the littlest Creevey, and Lavender Brown, savaged by the werewolf Greyback. Snape. And on, and on, and on the carnage went.

"Harry," Teddy asked, "can Draco sit next to me for dinner?" Harry, flustered, struggled to blink back the tears that had formed instantly. This never used to happen. Draco reached over and squeezed his hand, answering for him.

"I'd be delighted to sit next to you, Teddy," he accepted with a smile. "We'll be right behind you. Find your Gran so you can wash that soot from your hands before you sit down."

"Okay," he shrugged at the suggestion, like it was a silly one, and stomped off. Harry sniffled, wiping his nose unceremoniously with the cuff of his shirt.

"Alright?" Hermione watched him curiously. He nodded, gave a squeeze to the fingers in his grip and then let them go.

He recalled Draco's words, pleading to him what felt like a lifetime ago. 

_"There's always going to be pain, eventually, but there's happiness too. You, of all people, shouldn't be made to live your whole life in mourning. You deserve to live, Harry. To be happy._ "

"Never better," he answered, following Draco out to take their places at the table.

* * *

Dinner passed pleasantly enough, the glow of the sunset throwing shadows on the faces of those gathered around the table. It was a truly full house, with every Weasley child in attendance. In addition to Percy was his girlfriend, a mouse-haired witch of diminutive stature named Annabelle, who seemed a perfectly good match for his stuffy personality. His departure from Ministerial work had done nothing to dim his love of rules; he'd made the move into financial services and apparently found great success working for the national wizarding bank of Belgium.

The conversation was easy, the mash and roast beef mouth-watering, and the wine fairly free-flowing. There was a certain tension in the air as Arthur poured flagons of mead and George refused, hand held over the mouth of his glass, eyes cutting daggers into Draco from across the table.

"I'd rather hear more about the tax code changes for first-time home-buyers," he said snidely, which was enough to actually get Percy to start talking about the topic again, seemingly unable to sense the sarcasm in his brother's voice.

The moment of tension passed without fanfare, and so soon it was properly dark when the time the younger generation stood, clearing the table of the main course's dishes to make way for pudding. Draco tapped Harry by his elbow and gestured with his head to follow him out.

Harry followed, surprised at how much cooler the air was in the quiet of the hallway by the front door. It was quiet too, in a way that it never was in the dining room, nor the kitchen, from which Ginny, Neville, Ron and Hermione's voices now emanated.

"What's up?" Harry leaned against the wall, soaking in the chill against his heated cheek.

"I—" Draco peeked over his shoulder, then around Harry to look upstairs, as though someone might be listening in.

"I've almost done it. It's ten pounds, not a stone, but still," he whispered. "No purging in thirty-three days, either." The vein visible at the opening of his pale blue button-down shirt was filling and emptying at a dizzying rate, his worry made palpable. He looked expectantly at Harry, eyes wide.

Harry was sure this was the place to say something, but his brain took that emotion in another direction, so instead, he pulled Draco into a sudden hug. He hadn't expected it—they rarely did more than touch hands in public—so he stumbled into it before settling in against him.

"Is this alright?" Harry squeezed tighter, surprised to feel Draco's heart thumping hard against his chest. Draco nodded into his neck, so Harry exhaled, clutched at him as long as he dared, letting his smell envelop him in safe, warm feelings. Draco's hands rubbed at his back through the thin cotton of his t-shirt and he too let out a deep breath.

"I'm never sure," Harry admitted as he pressed away, holding his own ribs instead. "It seemed right."

"It alright," Draco bit his lip, laughter held behind them. "I accept hugs, you know."

"That's great," Harry wanted to hold him and twirl them around and shake him as ebullience bubbled up within him. Something sparked above their heads, and he feared that perhaps he'd set the lightbulbs above to explode with a bit of exuberant magic, but it was only that—sparks, like fireflies, buzzing high above them. "That's so great," he repeated.

"Thanks," Draco shook his hair and dipped his head, abashed. "I figured you'd notice and—but—nevermind. I needed to tell you. And this means I'm about to move to phase two." He checked over his shoulder again, clearly paranoid. Which was fair, in the Weasley house—there was often someone just out of sight. Secrets didn't last long within the walls of the Burrow. Harry waved a hand, a strong _Muffliato_ enshrouding them.

"There. No one will be able to get through that, not even with Extendible Ears," Harry grinned at him. "Remind me what phase two involves?"

"The scary part," Draco said, picking at his cuticles. In truth, Harry had noticed the hollowness of his look leaving him. It was slight though; _Draco_ was still slight. If his trousers didn't hang so loose, pockets of fabric falling empty where flesh should be, the change was small. But it was the start of something great in his life, and Harry wasn't one to turn down small victories.

"Now I've got to try to get rid of my list of no's. I'm starting with pudding. I _love_ pudding," he said, absently, eyelids fluttering shut. "I haven't had proper afters since I was fifteen, and I'm _so_ tired of squares of dark chocolate."

"You're kidding," Harry said. Draco shook his head.

"I'm going to try it tonight. I just—I don't want to freak out, or anything.” He pulled at the fingertips of his right hand. “So I'm telling you because I want to try, and I'll stay at the table at least a half-hour, and I promise, I won't go and—you know. Do anything about it."

Harry nodded, pulled his hand up to kiss his knuckles.

"I'm proud of you," he said, as Ron's head appeared over Draco's shoulder, a quizzical look on his face.

"Sharing secrets out here, I see," he said. Harry rolled his eyes and dropped the spell. Ron gestured into the dining room.

"We've got portions going. Want yours with ice cream?" Harry nodded, and Ron turned his attention to Draco. "I assume—"

"I'll have some this week," Draco interrupted. Ron made a sound of pleased surprise.

"Thought you ballerinas didn't eat sweets, considering you never do," he said. Harry frowned, ready with a chastisement, but Draco gave a louche motion of his hand, smooth as anything.

"We make exceptions for carrot cake. It's my favourite," he said, shortly. "No ice cream, thanks," he added.

"Is it really your favourite?" Harry asked as they returned to their seats. Draco picked up his dessert fork and tapped the tines on his palm, a look of great concentration coming over him.

"Mmmhmm," he hummed. "I used to have it every year for my birthday. The elves at the Manor made it with candied pineapple for me."

Unspoken, that the tradition had been broken at fifteen. The why of it. The scars of war nearly six years gone, some only now scabbing over, or sealing shut; it seemed they’d never fade entirely away.

Harry leaned in to speak into his ear. "We'll have to remedy that for your birthday this year."

He slid his Occlumens in place to hide the thoughts that _birthday_ brought up. There was a pair of seasons tickets to the ballet already purchased, sitting idly at the bottom of his sock drawer, ready for the occasion. Pansy was working with him on a dinner reservation at the Shard—it would be exorbitant to book the amount of private space they'd need, but Harry didn't care. It was a new year, and he wanted to make the most of any and all excuses to bring their loved ones together and celebrate.

They held one another's eyes as the plates of cake levitated in, and Harry took his free hand under the table, sending a wash of his most soothing magic through the warmth of their connected palms. The love he felt expanded inside him like helium in a balloon, and he was glad to have this outlet—a place to pour it.

They ate in companionable silence, listening in to more wedding talk. It buoyed Molly to focus on it, and Harry could tell that Hermione and Ron were playing into that harder than usual, as she was always brittle around the days that had to do with Fred.

Ginny, Neville and George were the first to depart from the table to digest in relative peace around the house when rapping on a window came from another room, the clicking of an insistent owl.

"An owl, at this hour?" Arthur pushed up from his chair to check, returning a minute later with an envelope that he walked over to Andromeda.

"Something urgent, I suppose," she murmured, un-shrinking a pair of reading glasses from her shirt pocket to read it. She put it down with a huff and leaned back into her chair.

"Piece of work, isn't she, your mother?" She spoke over Teddy's head to Draco. He daintily took a tiny bite of cake—he'd been eating it at half-speed, Harry watching as he chewed each mouthful until it must have totally disintegrated—and took the opportunity to put down his fork and daub at his lips with his napkin.

"At least she's finding new duties to do with her time," he answered knowingly.

"That's one way to put it," Andromeda scoffed. "I didn't know that your parents kept the place in Toulouse."

Draco leaned back in his chair, one eyebrow lowered. He frowned lightly. "I'm sorry—I don't follow."

"What are we talking about?" Percy stopped, halfway out of his chair, having said his goodbyes and preparing to leave to find where his girlfriend had absconded to. "Did someone say Toulouse? Now, the Basilica of St. Sernin, wasn't I just telling you about Romanesque architecture—"

"Moving to France," Andromeda spoke over him, her frown of confusion deeper than Draco's. "I'm surprised you didn't bring it up already."

If Harry hadn't had a view to see how deeply Draco gripped his own thigh under the table, he wouldn't have known that he reacted to the news at all. As it was, all he did that was visible to anyone else was blink.

"I don't know anything about that." 

Andromeda clutched a hand to her chest, mouth agape, but Draco held up a hand.

"Please, don't apologize. It's—that's what the letter is about?" Andromeda nodded, letting her glasses fall to dangle from a chain around her neck. 

"Dear, I'm so sorry. I assumed you knew." She fiddled nervously with the chain her glasses hung from. "I thought you and Cissy were still close?"

Most of the table clued into the conversation, many sets of eyes suddenly fixed on Draco and Andromeda. Draco's ears went pink under the steady observation.

"We are, normally. She's been busy—I haven't seen her since February." He straightened in his seat and stared at his plate, but Harry watched as his fingers dug in more tightly to his thigh. "I finally know why."

Molly sucked her teeth, reaching out and placing a hand on the table, as though she wished to reach for him and clasp onto his. "Dear. I'm sorry to hear that."

Draco shook his head, refusing to show any hurt in the face of the news. "It's fine. I'll have my own letter to read come morning, I suppose." He looked to Harry, a small smile held in place as he blinked rapidly. "It'll be in holding at Maude's, won't it?"

"Draco," Harry said, but Draco shook his head back and forth, once, decisively. Harry couldn't show too much care right then, or he'd fall apart. 

"It's fine, I'm fine, really," he took a deep breath and tried the smile on Andromeda. It would fade, soon. It was worse than when he used to pretend that he didn't feel anything at all, and hid his thoughts behind the mask. This polite acceptance of bad news was far more distressing than his cool, snide demeanour had ever been.

"I wouldn't have said anything, it's only—what you said, I thought you knew—"

"What about your name?"

Harry asked the question quietly and the table fully went silent. The kids could tell something boring was happening and wriggled in their seats, sugar coursing in their veins.

"I think it's time another round of Quodpot," Bill said, leading them out from the room. Draco took a sip of water to play for time as they left, and then all eyes were back on him.

"I'll figure something out," Draco spoke lowly, staring at his plate again. Harry wished as he often did that he had the power to control time. He wanted to go back to distract Draco from Andromeda’s comment. He wanted him to have the chance to finish the fucking cake, goddamnit. Why couldn’t anyone else see what was important, and what was not?

"This whole thing reeks of Lucius," Harry started. "The timing. She started cancelling on you right after you got the letter. What if—"

Andromeda cut in. "What about a name?"

Draco's breaths came faster. Harry reached out to touch the hand still gripping at his thigh and he retracted it from him, gripping into a trembling fist.

He looked up into Harry's eyes with a steely glare. 

_Mine_ , he thought, _that was my secret to share._ His thoughts didn't hiss or rankle. He sounded wounded. Scared.

"My parents have been sending all sorts of signals that they don't want anything to do with me for a while now," Draco spoke to Harry, but his words were for everyone at the table. He turned back to Andromeda and gave a shrug, finally turning on the affect of sarcastic lack of care. This wasn't good. He was going to shut down and shut out everyone, Harry included. 

"Harry's referencing the fact that I've been disowned, and find myself in need of a family name."

Gasps went up from the table at a volume that Harry hadn't imagined. Andromeda and Molly's jaws dropped faster than the time Ginny dropped the word 'cunt' into conversation at the table.

"I'd been meaning to ask my mum, but—" Draco broke off, shaking his head, lips curled in a smile that grew less believable by the minute. "I don't know why I'm surprised anymore, honestly. It's almost romantic, isn't it, the way she always picks him over me."

"Don't say that," Andromeda slapped a hand on the table. "It's a disgrace to put one's children second. Ever, for anything." 

"I'm sorry, everyone,” Draco lay his napkin down over his plate and pushed back suddenly. He winced as he stood, the feet of his chair squeaking loudly on the floor, "I need a minute."

He touched Harry by his shoulder and looked at him meaningfully. "I'm going outside for some fresh air. If I'm not back in a half-hour you can send a search party looking for me, okay?"

Harry nodded, holding that hand even as it slipped away and Draco left, the sound of the front door shutting behind him. His words had been meant to assuage Harry—he was going outside for a smoke and quiet contemplation, not to the loo to be sick. He needed time and space, but it was temporary. 

Harry was startled by a stream of very colourful french language on the part of Fleur.

"Were you never going to tell us, hmm? Eez zat eet?"

Harry stammered, shocked at the vehemence in her words. "I—"

Ron scoffed. "Yeah, what the _fuck_ , Harry—"

" _Language_ ," warned Arthur. Harry could only be thankful for a second before he too launched into his own inquisition. "What were you two thinking, keeping this to yourselves?"

"It wasn't my secret to tell!" Harry exclaimed. "I shouldn't have said anything. He had a plan—"

"He has no _name_ ," Hermione said, half out of her chair. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"Clearly not!" Harry practically yelled back at her. He forced himself to breathe and his next words were quiet, controlled. "I don't understand why you're all so angry with me."

"We are family, _non_?" Fleur asked. "He sits 'ere, at zee table with us? Then he is family. We need to do something." She'd grown pale since the conversation began and slumped in her chair. Harry's stomach sunk—this was clearly worse than Draco had let on.

"Will someone _please_ explain what the hell the big deal is here?" 

"Witches and wizards without family names are walking targets for Dark magic," Hermione said. Her eyes were round, shocked, and Harry realized that this really was serious. "The level of threat..." She shook her head as though to dislodge it of dangerous memories. 

"A family name is tied to all sorts of benefits. House magic—you gain protections from being on the grounds where your family has lived and loved and died. Your magic is stronger—magical people literally live longer, healthier lives when they regularly visit family-owned lands."

"It's a layer of protection from all sorts of hexes and curses," Ron added. "Infant mortality rates are lower, marriage bonds are stronger—"

"Well. He's still got one until next February, I think," Harry said. Molly and Arther shared a look that was mostly concern. "That's good, isn't it?"

"It's better than nothing. But he's been blocked from visiting home for months, and has been disowned legally already, yes?" Harry nodded, and Hermione winced.

"Harry, you wouldn't know it, but to someone with as old and powerful a name as Malfoy, to have that stripped away," she looked around, as though searching for an answer, "it would be like navigating the world wandless. He's vulnerable until he gets another name that has some power behind it."

"Narcissa will give it to him," Harry said with a finality he wasn't so sure of anymore. "The woman who saved my life for him wouldn't leave him to drift without a name. We'll go to France to talk to her if we have to."

He stood and started stacking plates by hand. It was odd but nobody stopped him or spoke of it again until he left the room with a heaping pile and set them by the sink, which he set the tap to fill with hot, sudsy water. 

A pile of glasses appeared at his elbow, and Harry turned to see that Hermione stood on the threshold between rooms and levitated more dishware in to him.

"Thanks," he said, throat raw from where emotions scraped at his vocal cords. She shrugged, blew an errant curl from where it had fallen into one eye. 

"I'll scrape. Ron can dry."

"I'm using a charm," Ron said good-naturedly as he stopped to give her a peck on the cheek and ambled over to Harry's right side. 

"You’ll end up with spots on the wine glasses that way," Harry said. He and Ron shared a look—it was what Molly always complained about whenever Ron dried and put away dishes. Ron shrugged it off.

"Who cares—the stuff inside them tastes the same anyway."

Harry set to rinsing and scrubbing by hand, laying clean pieces down in the cool water of the right side of the sink for Ron to direct his drying charm at and stack into piles. Hermione sat on the countertop and levitated them around, occasionally sending back pieces for additional drying, but never additional washing.

It was obvious that Hermione and Ron spoke to hide the voices of the adults in the room behind them from filtering into Harry's ears. 

_Adults_. _Still thinking of them as adults, but what does that make you? Kids. Look at how much you don't know about the world you live in. You and Draco both—is this all you are? Broken little boys trying to make it in a world run by rules you don't understand?_

He was grateful for the voices of his friends; that they understood that he needed to be alone with his thoughts and feelings, but also not alone, and this was how they did it for him. When he finished with the dishes from dinner he cleared the sink and ran the water again, starting in on the pots and pans. Ron and Hermione only stopped talking for a second, then resumed their idle chatter as he vigorously rubbed a copper saucepan clean using nothing but soap and elbow-grease. He knew that the older generation would find it troubling, seeing him there washing up the Muggle way, but it made him feel useful when he otherwise felt useless.

How could he have been so blind to the ramifications of the changes happening in Draco's life? 

_Because he kept it from you. He didn't want you to worry, or—_

"What time is it?" He pulled the rubber plug from the sink and rinsed his hands clean, shaking droplets into the sink. 

Ron cast a _Tempus_ , leaning against the counter, long legs stretched and crossed before him. "Ten past nine. You thinking about getting out of here?"

"I guess so, yeah," he wiped his hands dry on his jeans. The turmoil inside him had lowered from a boil to a simmer. 

Hermione gave him a bracing look, tempered by the droopiness to her eyelids. She'd partaken in the mead, and it made her sleepy, as the third glass of anything typically did. 

"Draco's been gone a while, hasn't he?" She looked over her shoulder out to the stars twinkling in the night sky framed by the little window over the sink. 

"I should go find him," Harry muttered. He didn't bother going to fetch his jacket, opting instead to throw a resizing charm at a pair of boots Arthur usually wore gardening and slipping into them and then out the back door. The chill of the night air was a welcome change on his skin—he itched in it, wanted to work the feelings of worry and despair out. Perhaps he'd go for a night run once they made it home and he could slip into a pair of trainers.

"...very unfair characterization of Harry..." 

Harry couldn't see anyone in the garden, but could very faintly hear Draco's voice up ahead. The edges of trees and shrubs shone blue-grey in the moonlight, and he stumbled, nearly rolling his ankle as his foot found a hole in the path.

"Bleeding gnomes," he cursed, rubbing his biceps for warmth as he continued on, boots crunching on the shells and pebbles underfoot. He had to watch where he was going in the dark, careful not to trip in unlaced boots that were still a size too big.

"...know what I think?"

Harry stopped mid-step and straightened up. That was George's voice and it was laced with malice. 

"Draco?" Harry called. He drew his wand and cast _Lumos_ high above, and still, nothing. Before him was meadow and then the scraggly trees that flagged the beginning of the woods to the west of the house. To his right, nothing by rolling hills covered in waist-high grasses that hid that which was more than a few dozen yards ahead. 

"...like an infection. Probably got it from being Greyback's bitch."

"George?" Harry called louder. "Draco? Where are you?"

He stopped, completely still, and listened. The sounds of small animals emerging from their hiding places rustled the weeds, but for a long few seconds nothing intelligible, just low voices, too far away to make out words. Then, a series of sounds. The snapping of branches and the swishing of leaves, and last, a sickening thud. 

_"Accio_ George's wand," Harry yelled, holding his hand up with blind hope. It hit the back of his knuckles at high speed, signalling that it had come from within the darkness near the woods. Harry didn't think at all as he ran across the field, stuffing the wand into the waist of his jeans as fear from the unknowns of that dull sound grew with each passing second.

Suddenly, George appeared up ahead. It was as though he stumbled backwards out from a black hole—he wasn't there and then he was, tripping over his own feet and falling backwards onto the ground with a sharp exhalation. His eyes were wide with fear, as though he'd seen a ghost.

Harry ran to him. "What the fuck, George? Where's Draco?"

"Accident," George swallowed hard, pointing into the blackness from which he'd fallen. "Shit, fuck, accident. I didn't mean to, he just—I wanted to get away, such a prick—"

Where George's words had previously sounded sharp, Harry could now tell they were dulled by alcohol. He reeked of it, the whites of his eyes bloodshot pink, reflecting from the light of the stars shining high above.

Harry didn't have time for him. He hadn't heard Draco's voice in over a minute, and now that he'd found George, he'd need to learn what _accident_ meant. He turned to face the forest and, and up-close could tell that it was differently dark, here. The blackness was complete so that no stars were visible, blinking through it.

"What the fuck is this?" Harry demanded. "If you've hurt him, George, I swear to fucking god—"

"P-Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder," he spluttered. "Harry, don't—"

Harry stumbled into the blackness, immediately poked and prodded by branches. 

"Draco!" He yelled and shuffled forwards, swinging his hands madly. It was only the mouth of the woods—there was nothing more dangerous than sticks and stones, and—

Many things happened at once. The ground under his left, searching foot just wasn't there anymore, and the sick, swooping feeling of the earth giving way to air caught him by surprise as he realized that he was falling. It was an incongruous feeling, as falling through blackness gave the impression of falling forever, but it was over in a second as the blackness of the powder faded away and the reality of more ground beneath him became apparent as he fell into it, the wind knocked from him in a powerful blow. He rolled—once, twice, a trunk smashing across his middle back in an explosion of pain—and then he stopped at the foot of an oak, its twisted roots a gnarled bed beneath him.

In all, he'd barely fallen at all, a handful of metres altogether, but the resulting incline of the hill had sent him deep into the woods from where he'd started.

He sat up, head throbbing in time with the rush of blood through his veins. His glasses were lost, but he didn't need them to see the flash of white to his left.

"Draco," he coughed, pushing onto all fours. The white was a blob, but it had parts. Fingers. 

"Harry," Ron screamed into the darkness from what sounded like forever away, "where the fuck are you?"

"Here," he croaked, overcome by a wheezing cough. Everything hurt—ribs, tongue, teeth. Talking hurt most of all, and he didn't want to bother wasting time on trying, so he pulled his wand from his jeans pocket and set off red sparks high into the sky. With that done he crawled onwards until he was close enough to hold Draco's hand.

It was cool in his, and Draco was never colder than Harry. He was warm, so deliciously, wonderfully hot under the surface, that Harry's first reaction was to grip tighter. It must be a mistake—this wasn't Draco. Draco couldn't be cold.

Or quiet. Why so quiet?

"Draco?" He hated how scared his voice sounded. He edged closer, able to make out the profile of Draco's face, his neck, and where it connected to his torso. The light blue of his shirt glowed against the wet earth and leaves of the forest floor, and there was mud streaked darkly in his hair. He didn't move, didn't say anything to Harry.

"Wake," Harry said, and it was agony. Tears spilt down his cheeks—that was fine, it didn't matter, not as long as he could see what was happening right in front of him. "Wake," he pushed out, and then groaned, unable to finish the _up_.

He ran a hand over Draco's cheek, and it was cold too. Down to where it rested on the cold stone they'd both rolled to a stop on, and it was cold there, cold muck and mud wet against Harry's fingertips.

 _Not cold_ , his brain fought the meaning, _cool. It's cold outside and he's cool from it. He's fine, he's just asleep. He just needs to get home where it's nice and warm and he'll be right as rain._

The crack of air as molecules split apart and reassembled behind him signalled Ron's arrival by Apparition. 

He sucked in a breath and then he was beside Harry, removing his hand from Draco's face. 

"Draco, can you hear me?" He made a fist and vigorously brushed his knuckles against Draco's sternum. Nothing. Harry wanted to reach out, say _stop_ , but the pain caused by Ron's gesture was merciful. The lack of response meant that Draco wasn't conscious, was someplace blank and quiet and without pain, in the recesses of his mind. Ron knelt closer and pulled back one eyelid and then the other to peer inside. They didn’t resist, pupils sharpened pinpoints in icy rings. No blink. 

"Have you moved him?" Ron asked, facing Harry at last. The alarm was clear in his wide blue eyes as they swept over all the parts of Harry that hurt. Harry shook his head, turned to spit—his mouth had filled rapidly with blood, and he wasn't sure if he could speak anymore without passing out from the pain of it.

"He needs Mungos. You both do," he looked to where Harry and Draco's hands were clutched together. "Are you strong enough to Apparate both of you directly there, or do you need me to Side-Along you?"

Harry nodded, knowing it wasn't the right answer, but Ron got it. He'd switched into Auror mode, not wasting a moment's breath on anything but the necessities.

"Okay. I've got to deal with George. I'll call this in—we'll be right behind you, okay? You're both going to be fine. He's going to be fine."

Harry didn't know what Ron meant. Of course, they'd both be fine, Draco had been knocked out, was all. 

"You don't have time to waste. Go," Ron squeezed his shoulder and then stood, and Harry closed his eyes, concentrating with every fibre of his being on the smell of antiseptic and flop-sweat particular to the waiting rooms of St Mungo's halls.

He opened his eyes due to the torrent of pain that shot through him when they landed smack in the middle of the hallway he'd been envisioning. Something was wrong with his face—the jar of the journey pulled a startled yelp from him. They'd landed in the same positions he'd Apparated them in, Draco lying prone and Harry sat up next to him, clutching his unresponsive left hand in his own. 

"—patient on two is going to need—Potter! What the—"

Harry recognized the voice as Penelope Clearwater's, a voice he connected with the hospital intrinsically. She worked the Auror unit, and if he had the energy to laugh he would, that this was the exact location within the complex that he'd instinctively jumped to.

"Fell," he managed, struggling to keep from crying out around the word. Blood dripped, thick and viscous down his chin. 

"Fell," he said again, tears rushing down his face. It would have to be enough of an explanation of what had happened to Draco, and even as hands pushed him down onto a gurney and fingers separated his from Draco's, so many rushing bodies in lime-green scrubs, he couldn't look away as Draco's head rolled to the side and revealed that it wasn’t mud that darkened his skin, normally luminescent as the moon's light.

Blood. So much blood, black-red in his hair, painting half his face. Blood, and from the crack into his skull Harry had to wonder what else had leaked out into the earth before they'd made it to the hospital. 

"Harry? We're going to have to sedate you to treat you, okay?"

The last thing Harry understood was that there'd be more pain before it got better, _you'll feel a pinch when the needle goes in_. The last thing he thought was that if the sharpness he felt between his pointer finger and thumb, the bit of what he'd thought was stone, if it was a piece of Draco's skull, that he'd use it to slit George's throat with next he saw him. And then the voices muffled and there was beeping, and the sound of his own crying, and then there was nothing at all.

* * *

"Glad to see you've finally shown up for your quarterly."

It was a struggle to open his eyes, and as Harry did, they felt as though they'd been coated in sand in his sleep. He blinked them shut again.

"Miss me?" He mumbled. Harry could sense Penelope' smile even though he couldn't see it. His own lips curled, threatening to crack them. He licked the bottom one experimentally. Hot. Swollen. It tasted of pennies, so it was split after all. Not too badly.

"We thought we'd done something wrong and you didn’t like us anymore." 

Harry listened to the dry scrape and rub as she flipped through the parchment sheets clipped to the board at the foot of his bed. Visits to St Mungo's were scripts of sounds he could recite in his sleep. Next came the tapping of wood at the glass faces of the machines at the bedside. The rattling of pills in bottles as he got an explanation of what to take, and when. Potions in vials clinking against one another the way Christmas baubles did when as they were placed in his lap.

"Though I must say, we have triage for a reason.” Penelope moved to his side and, like clockwork, adjusted a tube running into his arm, and then tapped her wand against the machine that dispensed potions into it. “You gave Morrison at the front desk a heart attack, appearing like that."

Harry's eyes sprung open. He was on the Aurors ward at St Mungo's, and he was hurt. But he wasn't an Auror anymore, and this wasn't his normal. Not anymore. 

"Draco." He touched at the bleeding spot on his lip and Penelope frowned at him. 

"Head back," she said, and he tipped it obediently and swallowed hard, though it hurt to clench his jaw while doing it. She whispered _Tergeo_ to clean the blood, and then a longer spell, to heal the split. When she was finished, Harry ran a finger over the newly healed scab on his lip. "Where is he?"

"He's stable. Room six, down the hall."

"Tell me," Harry said. Rooms six and seven were reserved for intensive care, and considering Harry wasn't in seven, that meant something had gone very badly wrong with Draco.

Penelope moved back to the end of his bed and stood there, blinking at him. Weighing her options quickly, the way she always did. She had a stare that was a bit uncanny, but Harry found it soothing. She didn't shy away from hard diagnoses, straightforwardly delivered the truth. 

"He's stable," she repeated. "He's unconscious, and we're keeping him that way on purpose," she raised a hand to keep Harry from interjecting with a flood of questions, "until we have a better handle on how his body is responding to current treatment. Whether his recovery is a matter of hours or weeks, only time will tell."

"What do you—"

"Let me start off by saying what you did was spectacularly stupid, even for you." She raised one eyebrow as Harry settled back into his pillows.

Harry sat up straighter. Something was out of place. "How do you know what I did?"

"Aurors have been by," she said, and he relaxed back into the thin pillows piled behind him. "They'll be back in the morning to collect your statements, from both of you if they can." She checked the clock he knew was hanging over his bed. It was so rude, he always thought, that they didn't have the clocks on the walls the patients faced. Perhaps it saved them from counting the seconds and minutes and hours, but he thought the not knowing was worse. 

"Based on your injuries I'd hazard a guess that you fell over a storey, managed a fracture on both sides of your jaw, and bit into your cheek—don’t get me started on how difficult it was to knit that hole back together. You've an impact fracture on your right wrist that is going to take weeks to heal properly—no training for a month—and we might as well take out the bruised ribs, the way you treat them.” She tapped her fingers on the steel piping of the bed frame. Cold, exposed so that handcuffs could easily be employed on any part of the beds. Cruel efficiency for the Ministry’s finest. Penelope’s look softened. “But I suppose they keep saving your internal organs from constant puncturing, so we'll let you keep them, this time."

"Thanks," Harry said, rather than trying to smile again. "Why could it be weeks?" 

"We all hate that you do that, you know?" She shook her head, though her stare stayed strong. "You literally don't hear a word we say about what you need for your own recovery."

"That's because I'm always fine," Harry said. He coughed, and it went on longer than he expected it too. It sounded wet and it hurt, too, really, _really_ fucking hurt. Bruised ribs were no joke. 

Penelope stared him down. "You're not always fine, Harry. You took serious injuries tonight—"

"I've got to take better care of myself, I'm pigheaded, I know, I know. Why weeks? What's wrong?"

She exhaled, didn't bother with the rest of the lecture. "The impact his skull had, we're worried about the swelling that's to come, so we'll need to keep him under observation for a while. He hasn't responded as expected to the potions we've tried so far, so we're giving it some time." She took a deep breath and pulled a bottle from her breast pocket and rattled them at him.

"Inflammation. One a day with breakfast for six weeks," she tossed him a bottle of pills that looked like they were meant for horses. "And yes, you can see him once he wakes up if he agrees or asks for you. You ought to get a tea or something before then, and try to _rest_ —you look a fright, and it'll only scare him to see you like this. It'll be hours before he's awake.”

"Any other guests?" Harry always asked this. As a trainee, it had been awkward for him on the ward. Family members there to visit wounded members of the Auror force went tongue-tied upon seeing him shuffling down the hall, or would want to sit and regale him with personal stories from the war while he regrew his teeth.

Penelope shook her head. "Nope. Just you two, clogging up beds meant for Ministry employees."

Harry waited until she left to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and disengage the tube from his arm. He was in a thin cotton robe, but his clothes had been removed by magic that hadn't required cutting them. They were piled, freshly laundered on the worn leather and rattan chair in the corner. He moved slowly as he stripped and dressed. The pain in his torso was exquisite when he bent or twisted, but known to him. The feeling in his impacted wrist was worse because it was dull and constant. It was the kind of pain that kept him up at night.

He ran a hand through his hair and noted that he had no shoes, so slid his socked feet into the cheap, navy-blue plastic slides provided by the hospital. They were too big—they were always too big, but it didn't matter. He only needed to make it to the mini canteen on the ward, which wasn't more than thirty paces from any of the rooms. He shuffled at a snail's pace, gripping the handrail affixed to the wall. It was sticky, and he hated that he was used to that; the product of decades of waxing the wood without any stripping back, and unknown numbers of sweaty hands gripping it on the same grim trip he now made.

Harry was glad to see the canteen empty, its six tables and twelve benches tidy, the cavernous space filled with the tinny sounds of pop music from the wireless floating in the back corner. He smiled, and his lip held fast. Draco loved this song—he'd lip-synced all the words to Harry outside a fish and chips spot once while they'd waited for their order. 

_"For you, I'd bleed myself dry_ ,"he mouthed the words into a microphone fashioned out of a handful of serviettes. Snow was falling, fat, wet flakes gathering on his shoulders and in his hair. His eyes sparkled, revealing how he felt when he looked at Harry. 

_"It's true",_ he sung some of the lines under his breath because he wasn't much good at it, struggling with the high notes. _"Look how they shine for you._ "

The sound of a throat politely clearing startled Harry back into the present. A single house-elf was on duty at the till; new to Harry. Her name badge flashed a name in forest green at him—Miranda—the same colour as the triangular medallion affixed to the front of the glass encasement of pastries with an acronym and a number etched into it.

"That's new," Harry forced his healing jaw to push out more words. If he didn't move it too much, it wasn't as much trouble. "What does 'BUHEE 100' stand for?"

Miranda straightened in her seat. "It is being new, sir. Stands for the British Union of House Elf Employees."

Harry's eyebrows rose, which tugged at the new scars at the edges of his scalp. He should have looked in a mirror before he left his room to figure out where the new ones were.

"Amazing. Yours is the hundredth union already?"

Miranda shook her head, bemused by his interest. Harry didn't recognize her, but she couldn't be new‚ considering she hadn't commented on his Harry Potter-ness yet. 

"The group thought one hundred was more stately than one. We're the first."

Harry hummed. He selected a sticky bun and a cuppa, Miranda helpfully preparing it for him. He shuffled over to the nearest table and sat, leaning heavily into the wall, facing the main hallway. He'd see anyone who entered the ward from, and they him. 

There wasn't anything he could think of doing as the red arms on the clock on the wall slid smoothly around, seconds becoming minutes. Healers passed, chatting with one another, or bustling by alone. The tea was thin but good on his throat, though it burned the roof of his mouth and his still-healing cheek. The pain was good. Pain meant you were alive, still. 

He sat, waiting for an avalanche of feeling to come to him, but it was blocked someplace too deep within him to reach. The sticky bun sat untouched, like set dressing. 

"Could you turn this up?" Miranda nodded and the music got louder. Draco listened to this album all the time. Harry focused on the lyrics, sure that eventually they'd overwhelm him and he'd have a good, deep cry about everything, but the feeling wouldn't come. It wouldn't do any good to try to force it, so eventually he shuffled back to his room—number four, it was painted on the door, and on the bracelet on his wrist—to rummage through the rest of his belongings. His phone and wallet had made it with him, along with both his and George's wands, but not his glasses. That was alright—the vision-repair charms cast for him on arrival were a perk of being a frequent visitor to the ward. 

He left George's wand on the side table and pocketed his own, then took the phone—cracked, but serviceable—and slid the wallet back into a trouser pocket. Standing was difficult, and his room was too empty, so he instead dragged the rattan chair out to the hallway along with him.

"Where'd you think you're going with that?" He stopped, eyes sliding over to meet those of the witch at the front desk. Morrison. He gave his most convincing, apologetic smile.

"If I'm allowed to have it while I wait in the hallway, I promise not to make any fuss." She waved him on, eyebrows lowered in a decidedly unimpressed glare. 

He continued on until the door to number six was across from him and stopped, toed out of the slides, and sat heavily. His body felt about a hundred pounds heavier than normal, bones turned to lead. He pulled his knees up and into his chest to wait it out. 

Waiting. Alright. He was good at waiting. Waiting gave one the time to plan, so he categorized the things that needed doing.

George had attacked Draco. Ron said something about Aurors. They'd been called, so they'd been by the house. They were coming back to collect statements. Harry should be furious, but there was nothing there. His well was dry.

He flipped open his phone, was glad to note that he had a signal, a rarity in purely magical buildings. He pushed the buttons slowly with his thumbs, checking the message twice before sending it. Ron needed to call in a solicitor for George if he were to be questioned by Aurors. It didn't matter his level of guilt—it was the only way to ensure that the ensuing court case be fair.

The text message doubled as his way of letting everyone back at the Burrow know that he was okay. He added _Draco's stable_ at the end. They'd need to know that too.

Send. Sent. 

Next, a message to Victoria. Harry had appeared suddenly in public with Draco, both of them bloody. He'd be questioned soon by Aurors, and no matter how tight the security on the ward was, the news would spread. It was a little past midnight, so there was a chance that nothing would hit the perked ears of Prophet or WWN journos before daybreak. But. There was always a chance, and Harry needed Victoria to run point. He wasn't in prime condition, and she'd see the angles he would miss.

Message composed, reviewed. Sent.

He sat in the silence of the hall, observing the door before him. A curtain was pulled over the little window in it, so there was no knowing what was happening inside, but he could see shadows and light from under the slit at the bottom of the door. Healers were working. That was good, he thought absently. Draco wasn’t alone.

Pain flowed from his palm down the damaged wrist. It was due to vibrations emanating from his phone.

_New! One (1) New Message._

A text from Ron, asking him where in the fuck he was.

 _Language_ , Harry wanted to reply. He didn't smile at his own joke.

_aurors ward_

_wtf ive been looking all over for you_

_b right there_

Harry sighed, snapped the clamshell closed. There, work was done. He was badly tired and couldn't afford to be, not with his own vigil ahead. His forehead fell to the space between his knees and he hoped to rest there. It was a fools hope, though, as only a minute later a rush of cool air signalled the opening of the ward's doors as Ron walked through.

"What the fuck.” His words were sharp as he approached, but by the way his shoulders dropped it was clear that seeing Harry relieved some of the tension carried in his body. "Couldn't use the front doors like a regular person? I've been looking all over for you."

"It’s muscle memory," Harry mumbled. Ron stopped in front of him. Harry would have to crane his neck to look him in the eye, and settled for resting in the space between his knees again.

"Damage?"

"Nothing serious. Impact fracture, bruised ribs, broken jaw.” He was mumbling, but if anyone could understand him like this, it was Ron. “They're keeping Draco unconscious until they figure things out for him."

Ron scoffed, muttered, "Yeah, nothing serious at all," and shuffled on the spot, one leg jiggling. He was all nerves. Harry wished he'd sit down.

"I guess I'll grab a cuppa and join you." He backed up a few steps and then stopped. "Harry?"

He raised his head, balancing a jaw still tender to the touch on the back of his hands. Little flakes of black were caught in the hair on the backs of them. Like paint chips, only it was never paint, was it? Harry blew a stream of air to set it free. Draco's blood.

"Are you alright, mate?"

He considered this. What was it he felt?

"No," he answered honestly, "I feel, um. A little lost. But I will be." Ron waited for more, but Harry wasn't ready for that. Not yet. 

"A cuppa sounds great. There's a sticky bun in four, if you want it."

"Cheers." Ron's steps faded down the hall, disappearing into the canteen, and Harry was ready to close his eyes and let sleep take him when the door to number six opened.

In gloomy formal robes of the variety that most magical people had forgone since 1998, Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy looked like they'd stepped out of a time machine. Only, something was off. Time hadn’t stopped for them—Lucius had grown portly, and the redness of his prominent nose, pores stretched wide, spoke to the role that drink had in his transformation. The years hadn't been kind to him, his neck thick above a starched collar, and above that his grave face, now deeply lined. 

Narcissa had gone in the other direction and grown pinched, or maybe that was circumstance. Her son lay in a hospital bed behind her, though how the fuck had she known where he was? Her steps remained purposeful as she strode directly up to Harry, while Lucius' faltered upon seeing him sat there.

"Who gave you permission to be here?" Her words were clipped, demanding. Harry was startled by the realization that Draco looked so much more like her than he did his father. He'd inherited her cheekbones; the way her skin stretched over them was all Draco. Strange too, how much she looked like her sister, as the ample amount of white that now streaked her long mane of black hair attached her readily to Andromeda. 

Harry thought through the feelings he should have at their entrance. Longing, bone-deep, to see Draco's face instead of theirs. Indignation that they'd show up and dare question him for being there. Rage that the man who had dared to mar his son's face, to spew violence, to strip him of the most basic of protections had been in his vicinity.

“Mr Potter?”

But Harry wasn't all there in his body. The things he should feel couldn't possibly fit _just_ inside his body. He'd been knocked free when he'd taken a tumble down the hill, and the emotions would come later, and so he looked at the situation calmly, rationally. He stood, though standing suddenly made him nauseous.

Leaning into the wall, his cheek soaked in the coolness of the painted cement. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply until the feeling passed. For a second he could pretend that when he opened them he'd be back at the Burrow, and Draco would be whispering to him about cake. The memory was so strong that Harry could smell him, felt like if he reached out his body would be there. Warm, and solid, and real.

"Head rush," he breathed at last, by way of explanation. "It's from blood loss. Give me a second."

"Did you hear me?" Narcissa snapped. Harry opened his eyes onto hers, that colour of stormy seas, so like the lake in one of her son's. "What's happened? Why is my son here, in this ward?"

"He fell. Or was pushed, I don't know." Harry frowned at the door, buttercup yellow with the number _6_ painted in a dated burgundy colour, which had clicked shut behind them. Draco was beyond that door. "I brought him straight here. It was habit. I'm used to this floor." Harry's jaw protested all the talking he kept putting it through, and he winced through a throb of pain expanding out through his skull. He pressed a palm firmly to the wall. There. Steady, cool. Real.

"He's not in any trouble with the law, then?" Harry finally understood where Narcissa's line of questioning stemmed from. He shook his head gently, caught Lucius rolling his eyes over her shoulder. 

"How is he?" Harry asked. "I need to see him."

"He's unconscious. There's nothing to see." Narcissa was going to say more, but Lucius cleared his throat loudly and she turned to him instead.

"Exactly. He's alive, and as well as he'll ever be consorting with mudblood-lovers—" he glared at Harry from under a lowered brow, and just then Ron rounded the corner holding two teas aloft, and Lucius' thin upper lip curled instantly, "and of course, blood traitors. Why am I not surprised?” 

His was so condescending, so perfectly that which Draco had once emulated, that it seemed laughable that it wasn’t put-on as a joke. 

“Where there's boorish behaviour there's rarely a Weasley far behind,” Lucius added in an undertone.

"Oh, shut up, old man," Ron scowled as he joined them. The hallway wasn't wide, and the four of them was already enough to crowd it, but then the door opened again and a healer exited the room, surprise clear on her face to see so many people assembled there, staring in her direction.

Harry wasn’t looking at her at all, though. He caught sight of the domes of feet under thin waffled hospital blankets. Something panged in him. Longing, muffled, but there.

Everyone started speaking at once, and the healer—Xu, she went by her last name, he remembered—held a hand up and closed her fist. She looked into each of their faces in turn, her scowl brooking no bullshit. She was an old hand on the ward. 

“Xu’s an institution,” he remembered being told in training shortly before he met her following the lorry incident. 

"I appreciate that you all want to see the patient, but it's going to be a while before he's able to take visitors, or be questioned."

Ron shook his head. "Off duty. I'm here to see Harry—Collins is lead on this one." 

Xu nodded slowly, eyes flitting over to Harry. "You should be in bed." 

There was a sheen of sweat on her brow, which meant she'd been practising difficult magic behind that door. Worry panged inside of him. Feelings were cracking through—he was fast losing the control that nothingness granted. 

"Why could they see him and not me?" Harry swallowed hard at the end of the question. Nausea was building—he shouldn't have unhooked himself from whatever the machine next to his bed had been dispensing. He reached behind for the arm of the chair and lowered himself into it, Ron hovering as he did it. Narcissa stepped back from him like his weakness was contagious. Harry realized dimly that it always seemed to perturb people extra when he showed signs of distress. People preferred their heroes hale, hearty, and whole. 

"Emergency contacts and immediate family have full visitation privileges," Xu explained. "We needed them to make some decisions regarding the best course of treatment. Guest visitors have to request or be requested."

Harry accepted a paper cup of tea from Ron, struggling to control his breaths. 

"You're his emergency contact, and you were just going to leave?” He couldn't believe this was happening. He didn’t want to believe that the Narcissa that Draco visited, and loved, would allow her husband into his vicinity, but that was another matter entirely. The cruelty of her plans seemed outsize. 

_Abandonment issues_ , the Voice inside of him whispered. 

“No goodbye, nothing?"

He thought Narcissa would have the decency to look contrite, but all she did was straighten her cuffs and step closer to her husband. Lucius was sweating bullets—it was late for a drunk to be out in public, and he leaned heavily onto his serpentine cane. She'd need to get him home and pour him another or put him to bed soon. Doubling down on which side she was on.

"He is still our son," she said. "His health is of utmost impor—"

Ron sneered. "Bullshit, you fucking disowned—"

"Hey!" Xu held her wand aloft in the centre of the hallway, a sudden silence descending. "This is a public space, and we will have decency and decorum at all times, am I understood, Auror Weasley?"

It wasn't a question. "Yes, ma'am," Ron said. His chest heaved but he took up the spot next to Harry and squeezed his shoulder.

"I'm going to the front desk to file my report and if I'm able to make out any colourful words between there and here, I will relieve all of you of your visiting privileges and you'll be welcome to wait for news from home." She eyed Harry. "You've got five minutes before you're back in bed or I'm transferring you out of the ward."

"Yes, ma'am," Ron repeated, "I'll see he gets back safe." There was a pregnant pause before she lowered her wand and walked away.

"Narcissa, I've had quite enough of this for one night." Lucius swallowed heavily, weaving where he stood. "I'll wait for you in the lobby."

He turned and left, the clicks from the foot of his cane dulled by the linoleum floors. Narcissa seemed smaller on her own, though her look of disdain didn't change one iota, lips turned as far down as her nose turned up.

"You were saying something about how I treat my son, Mr Weasley?"

"You've abandoned him with no name," hissed Ron. Harry couldn't believe the conviction he poured into those words, even as he managed to keep the volume to barely above a whisper. He gestured with the hand holding his tea, sleeves rolled up to reveal the scars he generally took pains to cover. "How could you do that?"

"I've done nothing of the sort," she retorted. "Lucius is the keeper of the family name, and as the patriarch, it's up to him—"

"Give him your name," Harry interrupted. He couldn't bear to look at her anymore. Feelings were surfacing, from all sorts of places. The Forbidden Forest. Narcissa, asking after Draco. Harry, in the kind of pain that made him want to end it all. Wanting to die. Wanting to want to live, still. Wishing he had a family that was alive that could care for him like that, and not be forced to subsist on the enduring, never-ending love of parents who were no longer there to embody it. He realized that he’d envied Draco the love of his mother, but that vision was tainted now. Her love was a poison, whether she could see it or not. 

"Don't you _dare_ tell me what to do about Draco," she hissed. "As soon as the Firecall came, I came. My son wouldn't be here if he wasn't consorting with you, and now who knows what's happened to him, pain potions are hardly doing a thing—"

"What about pain potions?" Harry whispered. He held onto the metal tubing of the chair's arms and found it to be shaking. Fuck George; he was going to kill Narcissa Malfoy, apparently. "You gave him pain potions?"

"The Healers did. They said something about anaesthesia, and—" she fluttered a hand, frowning, "we said to do it, of course."

"He's an addict," Harry spoke slowly, dimly aware of the swish of Healer Xu's scrubs as she returned from the front desk. He looked at her, noted her frown. It wasn’t good, to get her frowning. "You can't just _give_ him those things. What if he relapses?" His throat was tight, and the lights in the hall flickered; too many feelings bubbled inside him, rising too fast. 

"Careful," Ron whispered. Harry sucked in a breath and bent slowly to put his tea down on the floor, had to close his eyes as he sat back up, the pressure in his skull was so great. 

"You knew that," Harry said. The oscillation between anger with her callousness and the sick pit of worry opening up inside him was too much to bear. When he opened his eyes the lights in the hall were still once more, and the shaking had stopped. He couldn't fall apart yet. 

Narcissa wrung her hands—delicate, beautiful, bejewelled in silver rings studded with stones the size of pebbles. Draco had inherited her hands, too, and one, exactly one such ring that she'd gifted to him. 

"How can you be like this?" Harry asked. He meant it. 

_What a trick that must be, to drift through life, not a care in the world who gets hurt. Never sparing a thought to how your actions affect others, and how those effects ripple out, and out, and out._

He wanted to know what it was like not to care.

"That was years ago," Narcissa said, the vehemence gone out from her voice. 

"It's always, for him. It’s not the past, it’s—it's forever.” How much work could be undone in one night? The hard work of years? "How, _why_ —"

It seemed that Narcissa had enough love in her to look mollified, but not enough to admit she was wrong, apparently. 

"If he's still susceptible to unsavoury lifestyle choices like that, and, and—" she stammered, searching for an out, for a way that this wasn't her fault. "If he's committed to _this_ ," she gestured at Harry, "whatever it is he's doing with you, this is the sort of behaviour that makes him sick. He can abuse drugs or not—it's a choice he makes. If he wants to carry on with follies about living for sinover propriety and marriage, then he's not the son I raised anymore." 

"No, he's not," Harry couldn't keep the emotion from his voice anymore. It wobbled and broke and he'd been crying soon if he wasn't careful, but he didn't care anymore. "He's infinitely better than that. Somehow, despite you both, he's a wonderful, caring person, and any parent should be so lucky as to have him as a son."

Narcissa gawped, and Healer Xu and Ron remained in perfect silence. 

"What a disappointment you are, Narcissa. I'm ashamed that this is who you've become." Harry sat straight in his chair and took a deep steadying breath. "You know, you're the reason I vouched for him at the trials. And look where you've ended up now."

She looked to the doors of the wing, behind which was her husband. Her life, her choices. She didn't look at Harry again, or at the door behind her.

"You're right. He's not my son anymore," she said, so quietly that Harry held his breath to hear what she said next. "I'll grant him my maiden name to use, and you, my duties as an emergency contact."

Healer Xu raised a finger to interject. "The patient will need to sign off on that."

Narcissa heaved a breath, pulling out a pair of gloves that had been tucked away in a pocket. 

"Consider it granted on my end. He hasn't got family anymore, as far as we're concerned.” There was a tremble in her voice, Harry was sure of it. She was doing this for her own reasons, reasons he couldn't fathom. She turned to leave, but before she did, she said one last thing.

"Take care of my son, Mr Potter."

With that, she was gone.

* * *

Harry knew he slept because he dreamt of fire. When Dream Draco joined him and sat at the supper table, his eyes were orange-bright coals and his breaths plumes of sulphuric smoke. He laughed, said something in a language Harry could not fathom to understand. When Harry looked down, his own hands were chained to the arms of his chair and there was a knocking at the front door, the steady knocking—

Harry woke with a gasp to rip sweat-soaked sheets from his legs. The thin cotton gown he wore was mint green around the hems but dark where it stuck wetly to his body. 

He stood in semi-darkness, blinking blindly at fuzzy shapes. This wasn't home, but it was familiar. The smell of linseed oil and the feel of cool linoleum tiles underfoot. No birds chirping, no breeze from the window, but the murmuring of voices in the hall.

 _Hospital_ , his brain supplied. He sat back on the bed and ran a hand over his brow and into tangled hair. 

A knock came at the door. Ron's—three times, polite.

"Yeah," Harry croaked. Ron slid inside the blueish darkness, a looming figure in a sunbeam of yellow light from the hallway until he closed the door quickly behind him. He smelled of coffee, or rather, the burnt scent of canteen coffee he'd brought Harry quickly filled the room. Harry accepted it with a hand he was glad wasn't shaking.

"I hoped you'd still be asleep," Ron said, taking a seat at the foot of the bed.

"How long have I been out for?"

Ron sipped his tea and took a breath. "A couple of hours. Hermione came by around five and you were gone. It's just past seven, now," he anticipated Harry's next questions. "Clearwater's released you. I figure we ought to go back to Grimmauld."

"I don't want to leave Draco," Harry said automatically. He rubbed his eyes as though that would make them work any better. "I can't believe I fell asleep, is he—"

"He's still out, and before you dig your heels in about it, I'm sure he'd appreciate a proper set of clothes to walk out of here in once he is awake. Personally, I'd rather it be you then me taking the brunt of his ire for picking out said outfit."

Harry's cheek lifted in something like a smile. Reality set in quickly as he sipped the coffee, bitter on his tongue. It awoke his stomach, which was keenly empty. A few hours sleep was nothing when his body had run through every calorie available to stitch together broken skin and mend broken bones. It demanded fuel and rest, and he didn't feel ready to give it either.

"We'll be in and out in an hour," Ron rubbed Harry's shoulder and then gave it a tap, as though to say _come on, up with you_. "May as well pack some things—your glasses, at least. Probably a book, considering they still haven't wired this place for telly."

Harry considered a way around this ask, but they all seemed stupid. He was no closer to getting into the room down the hall now than he had been while he was sleeping. All they could do was hope, and wait, and if he wanted to wait in the hospital he may as well have more than one pair of pants to swap in and out of in the days to come. He had to admit that it was the sound thing to do. "You're right," he sighed. Ron stood, grabbing his pile of clothes and tossing it on the bed for him as he made his way back out of the door. 

"Course I'm right. I know it's hard when someone you care about is..." he trailed off. Harry could tell he was staring at him. "Well, you know, being your friend has made me something of an old hat when it comes to waiting in hospital wings. The sooner we leave, the sooner we'll be back. Come on."

Leaving wasn't so bad, though there was to be no more clandestine Apparition within the building, so they had to trudge out the front doors. _L_ _ike plebians_ , Draco's voice supplied, _don't they know you're the wizarding king? We ought to put your profile on the galleon and call it a day_. Their photos were snapped by two photographers stationed by the entrance, the clicking sound barely registering as Harry raised his coffee cup to eye level, hiding his face the best he could behind paper and plastic.

Returning to the quiet of Grimmauld would have been overwhelming without Ron there, Harry realized as soon as he shut the front door behind them. 

"Get on it, then," Ron nudged him up the stairs, pulling his jacket off his shoulders for him. "Into the shower with you, and get enough clothes for a couple days. I'll see if Kreacher's around to help, yeah?"

Harry nodded, made a sound. He wanted to collapse onto the stairs, not climb them. It would be so good to be dragged down by feeling—to find a shirt of Draco's and breathe him in, assuming the worst from the floor of the study, preferably so drunk that he couldn't see. 

But no. Ron paced the front hall, speaking quickly to someone on the phone. Giving orders, asking questions, making decisions. Harry could make out his hand shooing him up the stairs, and he realized that for once, everyone wasn't turning to him to make things right. Ron had stepped up, would be his glue for the day or the week or as long as it took to bring Draco home.

So Harry plodded upstairs and stripped perfunctorily. He scrubbed till he went pink under the hot water, shaved close to the skin, washed his hair twice. Brushed it, even, taking great pains to get the part as neat as he could. As though Draco would wake up and be proud of him for putting the effort in. He found his old wire-frames in a drawer along with the newspaper clippings of Draco from last summer and nearly lost it, but as though on cue he was interrupted from a meltdown by the soft triple-rap of Ron's knuckles on the bedroom door.

"You decent?" 

"Yeah, sure," Harry called, stuffing the papers back inside. He'd managed socks and pants, which Ron snorted at, one eyebrow raised.

"Now that's a look. I couldn't find Kreacher, but I found this," he raised up a black duffel bag of Draco's, "and I've tossed in a whole bunch of comfy stuff I found folded in the laundry. It's insane, you know, like how much running gear can a person own, honestly?" He rustled through the bag as Harry crossed over to his armoire and pulled out two of everything, pulling on black trousers, a singlet and a woollen jumper. "I've got, um, there's a hoodie and some joggers, shorts—I figured it's hot in Mungo's overnights, isn't it? Stupid windows won't open and they keep it warm for the granny's don't they? Socks, pants, some t-shirts, they've got to be the Ferret's, they're so tight, what is this one, like a cap-sleeve—"

"Ron?" He stopped talking and looked up as Harry walked over and took the duffel from him, stuffing his own clothes hastily inside.

"What?" Ron stood, watching as he dropped the bag to the floor at their feet and pulled him into a hug.

"Thanks," Harry said, though it was muffled, his cheek pressed awkwardly into Ron's chest. He was in shoes and Harry was barefoot, so their height discrepancy had never been more obvious. Harry was glad that Ron instinctively ducked down a bit to make the angle more comfortable. They shared a deep breath, and Ron didn't pull away when his phone vibrated from his pocket.

"Don't mention it," he sighed, patting Harry's back. "If it were Mione, you'd do the same."

They separated and Harry couldn't believe how much lighter he felt for having done it. 

"Is she okay?" He asked. Ron nodded, a knowing smile on his face. 

"She's fine. Nutty, worried sick, obviously. She'll be by again to see you after work today." Ron leaned against the wall as he clicked in a text message, throwing scrutinizing looks Harry's way every few seconds. "You've been practising your hugs, haven't you?" 

"Don't tease, you fucking prick. I grew up in a _closet_." They both grinned at the joke that wasn't a joke as Harry threw a sock at him, then had to wait for him to toss it back so he could finish dressing.

 _Matching socks and all_ , Draco's voice mused, _would you look at that._

He stood, slung the duffel over his shoulder, and walked out to the hall. "Do you mind making proper coffees? And grab whatever you want to eat, I'll be done in five, I just need to grab toiletries—"

"Books. Trust me, don't forget," Ron pointed at him, making quick work of the stairs. "None of that depressing shit either, something stupid! Quidditch Weekly!"

Harry packed the last few things away inside the inner pocket of the travel bag. Waterlogged paperbacks and toothbrushes and back-issues of Potions Monthly. The last thing he grabbed was a pair of Draco's sunglasses, the big one's he adored. He hastily cast the charm to fix his vision and threw them on instead of his regular ones as he met Ron at the door. 

"Ready?" Ron asked. Harry nodded.

"Let's go get him back."

* * *

**Notes** : As a commenter recently put it, there are still some Big Sads to be had, but this is endgame Happy Drarry, I swear!

Thanks for reading :) Next chapter up by **Friday, March 12. xx**


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